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Speaker 1: Right now, Shane Jones is celebrating a new natural gas

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Speaker 1: well in Tartanaki. This is from an existing field, the

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Speaker 1: poor hoor Kuda production well should deliver four petidules into

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Speaker 1: New Zealand's energy grid each year. The Minister for Resources

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Speaker 1: with me tonight, home, Minister.

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Speaker 2: Goorder. Greetings folks, So you've.

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Speaker 1: Been in Tartanaki today. Can you just describe for us

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Speaker 1: how they're getting at this gas because it's quite interesting.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. The site's called Pahorkuta, near the township of White

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Speaker 2: Patter seven and a half kilometers both out and down

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Speaker 2: into the bed of the sea, extracting from different cabinist

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Speaker 2: areas usable gas. I today actually stood next to the

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Speaker 2: seven and a half kilometers of coiled up steel pipe

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Speaker 2: that has been used.

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Speaker 1: And it's exit. There's an offshore field, but you actually

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Speaker 1: access it from on shore using this big reg.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So they added infrastructure set up. The main rig

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Speaker 2: was called Big Bend. Big Ben's done the deal. Big

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Speaker 2: Bens moved on, hopefully to a new site with even

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Speaker 2: better prospects. The infrastructure links the onshore apparatus to seven

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Speaker 2: and a half kilometers off the coastline and down on

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Speaker 2: a some of doubt diagonal course, quite extraordinary engineering into

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Speaker 2: pockets of gas that are feasible to extract.

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Speaker 1: Which is good and great, And this is an existing

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Speaker 1: field we're getting, you know, we're sucking more out of it.

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Speaker 1: But it's only four petioles that they're going to get right,

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Speaker 1: and our production is down what more than twenty five percent?

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Speaker 1: So is this going to make a difference.

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Speaker 2: Well, there's about three hundred odd thousand households who rely

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Speaker 2: on gas. One hundred and forty six thousand households would

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Speaker 2: be serviced by the augmented supply that Omb announced today.

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Speaker 2: So yes, it's not inordinately large, But if you live

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Speaker 2: in one of those one hundred and forty six thousand

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Speaker 2: household it's not to be sneezed at.

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Speaker 1: What about the companies that are turning gas off to

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Speaker 1: households and saying, no, we're not going to supply it anymore.

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Speaker 2: Well, let's not hide from the fact. Ever since just

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Speaker 2: Ender sort to can the order and gas industry, it's

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Speaker 2: had a very negative effect on the sentiment and gas industry,

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Speaker 2: and we are in trying to invigorate and invigorate that

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Speaker 2: and turn it around. We see how gas works in

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Speaker 2: New Zealand is we need one foundation major user and

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Speaker 2: that major user is a Canadian company called Methodics, and

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Speaker 2: they make methanol and they supply it to various spots

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Speaker 2: around the world. And that's why the CEO was here

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Speaker 2: recently ensuring that I senior ministers, including the Prime Minister,

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Speaker 2: understand the gravity of the situation with the New Zealand

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Speaker 2: gas industry, and he was testing what will the government

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Speaker 2: do itself to de risk further exploration. So I'm working

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Speaker 2: on various proposals as to how we can accelerate both

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Speaker 2: money into the industry and genuine economic activity.

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Speaker 1: The big hold up is what you do after that

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Speaker 1: you've finished.

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Speaker 2: Drilling, right, Yeah, So there's a piece of legislation wending

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Speaker 2: its way through Parliament and one of the testy pieces

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Speaker 2: of the legislations called decommissioning. I. After the gas field

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Speaker 2: is exhausted, what process do you take to remove the

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Speaker 2: infrastructure that's the pipes and the various other parts of

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Speaker 2: apparatus that have been sunk into the bed of the

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Speaker 2: sea to take out this natural resources.

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Speaker 1: And so who's holding that up?

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Speaker 2: Well, you may or may not recall there was a

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Speaker 2: crowd called tamarind who walked away from their decommissioning obligations

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Speaker 2: four or five years ago. That left a bill of

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Speaker 2: three or four hundred million in rough figuess. So the industry,

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Speaker 2: you want to make sure that the provisions in the

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Speaker 2: statute don't disincentivize them from looking for more gaslus. At

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Speaker 2: the same time, I've been saying to them, I don't

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Speaker 2: want to undermine the Crown's balance sheet by leaving too

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Speaker 2: much of a bill of things go wrong with the

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Speaker 2: tax fairs.

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Speaker 1: So this is not about a negotiation between coalition partners.

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Speaker 1: This is basically between you and the industry.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, obviously I'm a proxy for our group of

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Speaker 2: cabinet ministers, the entire troika of three parties. We all

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Speaker 2: campaigned hard to re establish gas as a firming contingency field,

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Speaker 2: and I accept there are other elements in the broader

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Speaker 2: political community who don't believe gas or coal should be used,

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Speaker 2: but they belong to the juvenile work tribe. So I

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Speaker 2: have no for the thinking.

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Speaker 1: All right, still believe it?

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Speaker 2: There?

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Speaker 1: Thanks your time, Shane Jones, who's the Minister for Resources

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Speaker 1: with us tonight

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Speaker 2: For more from hither Duplessy Allen Drive listen live to

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Speaker 2: news talks it'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow

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Speaker 2: the podcast on iHeartRadio