Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. I'm pleased to take a call on the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill and I'm speaking because Julie Anne Genter our energy spokesperson is on leave.The Green Party is pleased to support this bill. It highlights I think the extent to which Aotearoa has been naive and the public sector and regulators have been dominated by the protests of the oil and gas industry that there are currently no explicit provisions in the Crown Minerals Act which set out the responsibilities of petroleum permit and licence holders for decommissioning wells and operations into the future. It doesn't set out at the moment the length of time that they're responsible for that and it doesn't set out the consequences of not doing that decommissioning.Decommissioning for anyone watching at home occurs when it's no longer profitable for a company to continue to extract oil and gas—the whole process of decommissioning commences. It's the process of taking the infrastructure and the wells out of service plugging the well so it doesn't release hydrocarbons remediating the site removing production facilities and any equipment. But at the moment the way the law is drafted means that permit and licence holders are only responsible for decommissioning for the issues that arise during the life of the permit and within six months of the resource ceasing to be active; not after that.We're supposed to have a regulatory regime in Aotearoa New Zealand which is based on polluter pays" where those who benefit the most from environmentally harmful activities bear the costs of any associated remediation and clean-up activities. Petroleum permit and licence holders are supposed to plug abandoned wells and they're supposed to decommission the infrastructure but that hasn't happened. And as other members in this House have noted that imposes significant liabilities on the Crown if it doesn't.What happens if things aren't properly decommissioned? There are huge environmental impacts. You can get the contamination of groundwater because the fluids from the well leak into groundwater contaminate aquifers and potentially our drinking water. If hydrocarbons build up under pressure they can potentially blow out. If the wells and the infrastructure are offshore then those may come loose from the seabed. And of course if you haven't got a properly decommissioned well if there's something like an earthquake that can also cause problems.As the regulatory impact statement notes there are currently 27 active petroleum mining permits and licences in Aotearoa; five of those are offshore 22 of them are onshore. Some of them are large like the Māui field and some of them are much smaller. These are ageing and as others have noted when these wells age there is an increased risk of problems occurring leaks occurring.The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment recommended way back in 2014 when she looked at the whole regulation of the oil and gas industry that there be changes to ensure that the industry bore the cost of both ongoing monitoring of abandoned oil and gas wells the remediation of future leaks by for example the imposition of an annual levy. But the former Government didn't act.We're getting action now because of what happened with Tamarind. That was a private equity company which bought those permits to operate the offshore Tui field. It claimed that it specialised in taking end-of-life fields and extracting the maximum oil and gas. It claimed that it would bear the risks of doing that. But it went into liquidation in December 2019 and as the Minister noted at an estimated initial cost of $155 million. So when the National Party talks about overly onerous responsibilities they don't seem to be recognising the opportunity cost of that initial $155 million which has blown out to $394 million of cost to the Crown to the public. What is the opportunity cost of that? How many thousands of hip replacements could have been funded from that? A new Whangārei Hospital predator control over all of the conservation estate but $394 million because Tamarind as a shelf company was able to get out of its responsibilities.So this bill fixes big gaps in the Crown Minerals Act. It ensures that with this concept of perpetual liability there is responsibility into the future. It's creating a clear obligation to decommission much greater monitoring powers and a requirement to obtain and maintain a financial security to carry out decommissioning work and potentially have that paid through the future. So there's an explicit legal obligation that the bill is creating.I really acknowledge the work of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee because it did very detailed scrutiny of the bill and made a number of changes which—the National Party is seeking greater flexibility for the industry. There were some quite significant changes that the committee made so that it did for example amend the provisions that would enable a company to apply to the Minister to seek an exemption for a permit holder if they wanted to leave the infrastructure in place for example. There are regulations I think that are out for public consultation at the moment on how this would all work. And it did do things like amend the definition of "petroleum infrastructure" to be less broad. So there are a number of quite specific changes that the select committee made in response to submissions.But the concerns around perpetual liability—my understanding from reading the report and some of the submissions was that there were also changes there so that they would set out the priority in which the Crown would enforce liability. It would go to the current permit holder first and then whoever owned it before them. So there were changes made in response to submissions.But this bill has a big gap. It doesn't apply to mining operations. In the hills behind Reefton OceanaGold has created an enormous tailings reservoir. Yes it has a big impoundment but in an earthquake in heavy rain events there is a risk in future that there may be cracks in that impoundment. The whole responsibility for the maintenance of that impoundment should be on the company in perpetuity. It shouldn't risk falling to the Crown. So this bill is a great step forward in dealing with the petroleum industry but it should apply to all mining operations particularly those that create big reservoirs and impoundments as OceanaGold has done at Reefton. We commend the bill to the House."