Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call on this bill tonight one that the National Party will be supporting through first reading to select committee because we are a party of personal responsibility and when people set out with intentions of exploring of course their intention would be to tidy up before they leave. Although one would actually note in the timing of all of this we could be suspicious and say this is the Government's Chased Them Away But Make Sure They Pay Before They Go Bill" in terms of the calls that they've made around oil and gas permits.So as the Minister said decommissioning is the process of taking petroleum infrastructure and wells out of service which may include removing the infrastructure plugging and abandoning wells and undertaking necessary site restoration activities. We know that the New Zealand petroleum sector is maturing an increasing number of petroleum fields are nearing the end of their economic life but we also know that these assets are going to be used for some time to come in terms of producing gas for our transition fuels to the future. But we too believe that the clean-up process is important and the Crown Minerals Act currently does not explicitly provide for petroleum permit and licence holders' decommissioning responsibilities for the length of time which they are responsible or the consequences of failing to carry out the decommissioning. One also wonders what the cost of decommissioning this Government's impact from 2023 onwards is going to be.But that aside this is a real issue. I have seen some of the decommissioning of the Tūī infrastructure as I've been down at Port Taranaki as that clean-up process was unfortunately left to the Government due to the situation with Tamarind. There is quite an effort going on in cleaning that up and it's no small feat and it is important. So New Zealand's petroleum regulatory regime is based on a principle where those who have benefited from the environmental activities bear the cost of any associated remediation and clean-up activities. However this principle is currently only explicit in relation to the lifetime of a petroleum permit or licence. So what this bill does is it provides an explicit obligation on petroleum permit and licence holders to plug and abandon petroleum wells and decommission any infrastructure left in situ after production is ceased. There are no market incentives for petroleum permanent licence holders to factor this residual liability into their economic decision-making. So really as the Minister did touch on before one of the bigger challenges comes once the well has been abandoned because the likelihood of an abandoned well leaking increases with its age. Moreover there's no guarantee that the company that drilled the now abandoned well will be still operating in New Zealand at that time. But what we are a bit wary of and why National's supporting this for first reading and want to take it to select committee is because we are really interested in what the public of New Zealand and the experts have to say around this. And I'm just going to make one comment to begin with tonight from John Carnegie of Energy Resources Aotearoa who said—Hon Scott Simpson: He's a good man.BARBARA KURIGER: He's a very good man Mr Simpson. He's an excellent man and he understands this industry—Hon Scott Simpson: In depth. BARBARA KURIGER: In depth absolutely. So he talks about this bill having good intentions which we would agree. The intentions around this bill are good but they require careful work to avoid unintended consequences. With this Government we've seen a number of pieces of legislation already that have had unintended consequences and we want to be very careful to work our way through this bill just to make sure that there's nothing hidden in here that's going to jump back and bite us or bite Parliament and Government in the long term. So these conditions are changing partway through to a retrospective liability and this could encourage earlier decommissioning. That was a comment that John Carnegie made and that could have a huge impact on energy security in this country because as we know there's already quite an impact on the energy security of this country from the decisions that the Government have made to date. That transition time which is currently called a just transition but doesn't appear to be a transition at all because there is no plan. So on the impact summary there's a couple of things that would concern us on the National side of the House. One of the things that it talks about in the impact summary is the constraints on data on which to assess the risk. So there are some constraints to assess the risk for the Crown of potentially having to step in as a provider of last resort. The specific costs of decommissioning petroleum infrastructure in New Zealand is uncertain and can vary significantly depending on the timing location extent of removal required and other factors. And so some of the numbers around this it's going to be a pretty hard job to make the predictions and to set the costs in place by the admission of those who have done the impact summary. So certainly the only certainty around this is the uncertainty and that is something that maybe during the select committee process we could try and get a bit more information around so that when this job is done it can be a little bit more accurate if you like.The second part of the impact summary talks about the limitation on consultation. So the consultation took place from 19 November 2019 to 27 January 2020 as part of the Crown Minerals Act review where the feedback was sought from Cabinet that they agreed in June 2020 to undertake this. So there hasn't been a consultation on the specific options that are being proposed here with industry or with other stakeholders. It's anticipated it says in here that "there may be some concerns which are further detailed … However we note that all stakeholders will have a further opportunity to comment on those through the standard legislation change process." Now I did hear the Minister say before that I think it was 14 November or a date in November if I'm correct which doesn't sound to me like it is quite the standard legislative process although it's a faster legislative process. Although compared to some or a substantial number of other pieces of legislative processes that this Government has put through this is what I'd call a medium-term one because most of them being quite short because this Government doesn't have a history of wanting to go out and consult and listen because someone might tell them what they don't want to hear. There doesn't seem to be too much openness and transparency around consulting with the public. So having said that I'm going to leave it at that for tonight and just say yeah we do have our reservations around some of the details in the legislation but we are supporting it to first reading. Thank you."