Copeland Gordon: Electricity and Gas Industries Bill — In Committee 
Copeland Gordon: Electricity and Gas Industries Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:15990] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 It seems quite extraordinary that we should be debating Part 5 in the context of the events that have happened in the last week. I think it was over the weekend that we saw the price of crude oil go past US$50 per barrel for the first time in history. As an immediate consequence of that we saw the finance leaders finance spokespeople and financiers of the G7 countries all rush off to Washington to huddle down with Alan Greenspan in order to look at the effect of that news on the economic future of the Western World. Believe me when petroleum does get to that kind of height—as I know very well because I worked in the industry during the 1970s—we really do have to start asking some questions about our economic future. It was interesting to me that the first thing to come out of the conference in Washington over the last weekend was the agreement of all the G7 nations that one of the vital things that has to happen is that we need to have better information about the world’s oil and gas reserves going forward. So it is amazing that the Minister on this occasion has had the foresight to identify a long way in advance of the rest of the world a problem that just in these last few days has really come into such critical focus. 
I would like to add too of course that we have had the scandal of the Royal Dutch / Shell Group probably deliberately understating its reserves by up to 20 percent and the huge fallout that has occurred all over the world when a company that was hitherto regarded as a bit of a paragon of virtue was found to be involved in deception if not in fraud to that extent. 
Brian Connell 
: This is not going to help that. 
GORDON COPELAND 
: This bill will help to address that because it states that the companies permanently need to give good information to the Secretary of Energy about what they have discovered in the ground here in New Zealand so that the results can be published and so that we all know what is going on. I ask the Committee to remember that I spent 14 years of my life in the oil industry so I do know something about this particular subject. I have been involved in the drilling of a lot of wells in this country and subsequently in bringing the oil on to the shore and processing it and so on and so forth. It is just simply true that we have had very very poor information on the reserves of petroleum and gas in this country. Sometimes the information has been deliberately withheld for a whole range of different competitive reasons. It is true that the very large oil companies are able basically to plug the holes in the ground even when they discover oil if they think it suits their books to leave it there for a few more years until the price goes up. That is quite common; it happens on a routine basis within the industry. That is really not very satisfactory from the point of view of New Zealand’s energy future. 
I believe that it is very very important for this bill to be passed so that we do henceforth get good-quality information about where this country is in terms of its oil and gas reserves. That will enable us all to plan sensibly to keep this country running. It is as simple as this actually: good decisions require good information and one cannot make good decisions without good information. This bill will provide good improved information about our oil reserves and our potential oil discoveries so that all of us can plan and make decisions accordingly.