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Speaker 1: In a week where regional New Zealand is getting whacked,

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Speaker 1: we now got method X proposing to downsize to a

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Speaker 1: one plant operation job set to go here. The company

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Speaker 1: puts the blame on the poor gas outlook. Former president

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Speaker 1: CEO of Methnex Corporation, Bruce aikins with us on all

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Speaker 1: of this. Bruce, very good morning to you.

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Speaker 2: Good morning, Mike.

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Speaker 1: That deal that was struck the other day between Methodics

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Speaker 1: and the power companies to help us out over this period,

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Speaker 1: is that tied in in any way, shape or form,

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Speaker 1: do you think or not?

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Speaker 2: No, I don't think so. And let me emphasize I'm

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Speaker 2: not here speaking on behalf of Methods. I'm really I'm

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Speaker 2: just an interested citizen who knows something about the energy

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Speaker 2: Patricks and yoursel. I think what we've been observing in

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Speaker 2: the last few months is just short term fluctuations, and

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Speaker 2: they always happen in the market. So I don't think

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Speaker 2: I think there's much noise and much ado about nothing.

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Speaker 2: I think the big deal, Mike is we lack a

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Speaker 2: long term coherent energy strategy. And if you think about

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Speaker 2: where does our energy come from and what are supply

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Speaker 2: come from, they're all very very long term decisions. If

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Speaker 2: you want to build a new dam to create hydroelectricity,

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Speaker 2: if you want to build a gas house station, or

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Speaker 2: a geo thermal firestation or a wind farm, they take many,

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Speaker 2: many years in planning and construction and commissioning, and many

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Speaker 2: hundreds of millions of dollars. So they're very big long

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Speaker 2: term decisions. And I think when we decided to promote

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Speaker 2: renewable energy, which I think is an admirable thing to do,

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Speaker 2: something we should all support and it makes I think

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Speaker 2: economic and environmental sense, the mistake we made was to

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Speaker 2: not recognize as a very long transition and we should

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Speaker 2: have thought that through. What was the transitional fuel that

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Speaker 2: we wanted to use? And I think it should have

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Speaker 2: been natural gas. What did we do? We would and

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Speaker 2: ban the exploration of natural gas and basically poured old

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Speaker 2: water over the any opportunity we have to use natural

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Speaker 2: gas as a transition. Pure to me, that's the big

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Speaker 2: long term issue that this country faces.

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Speaker 1: Couldn't agree more. Were you in charge of methodics when

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Speaker 1: that decision was made by jainda.

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Speaker 2: Ad No, no, no, no, no, I've retired long since

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Speaker 2: along before that, unfortunately, so no, I had no, I

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Speaker 2: had no, no, any particular insight into that decision. What

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Speaker 2: I think it was it was it was an ideological

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Speaker 2: that it was uh. And you know, here we have

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Speaker 2: the irony that the rest of the world is improving

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Speaker 2: their emissions characteristics by shutting down coal fired power stations

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Speaker 2: and replacing them with natural gas burning power stations, and

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Speaker 2: here we're doing the opposite. We're shutting down whatever natural

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Speaker 2: gas capacity we had, and we're importing coal from Indonesia

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Speaker 2: to run to run the Hunting power station insane. And

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Speaker 2: you know, we need that, we need the coal that

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Speaker 2: is keeping us keeping the lights on. But it's it's

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Speaker 2: complete stupidity that we've allowed this to happen and we

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Speaker 2: didn't think through the consequences of of banning the exploration

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Speaker 2: of natural gas.

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Speaker 1: To argument, well, one argument the Labor Party put forward

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Speaker 1: to that they say, it doesn't matter whether we're not looking.

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Speaker 1: When we were looking, there was nothing to find, true

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Speaker 1: or not.

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Speaker 2: Oh that's no, that's that's just silly. Really, you know,

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Speaker 2: natural gas is not easy to find, so and the

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Speaker 2: first to acknowledge that, you know, you drill a lot

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Speaker 2: of dry wells and before before you find things, and

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Speaker 2: you know there've been you know, several very large discoveries

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Speaker 2: in the Taranaki basin over the last sixty or seventy years.

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Speaker 2: The biggest one was Maui of course, and then you

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Speaker 2: know Parkour is probably the second biggest, and so those

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Speaker 2: are two discoveries. And all that time and you you've

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Speaker 2: been drilling wells and spending you know, many many hundreds

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Speaker 2: of millions of dollars looking for natural gas. So it's

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Speaker 2: not easy to find. What you need is a committed

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Speaker 2: explorer who's prepared to bring the rigs to New Zelle

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Speaker 2: and spend the hundreds of millions of dollars, have a

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Speaker 2: very long term view, and then if you drill on

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Speaker 2: that wells, you'll find you'll find natural gas exactly right.

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Speaker 2: You know, there's a wonderful story out of the North

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Speaker 2: Sea that the when before they discovered natural gas there,

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Speaker 2: they drilled hundreds of wells and they were on the

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Speaker 2: verge of giving up. And then the very last world

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Speaker 2: that I think BP drilled, they had a pocket of

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Speaker 2: natural gas. And then of course the rest is history.

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Speaker 2: That North Sea has been a prolific producer ever since.

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Speaker 1: Exactly, Bruce good Insight, I appreciate it very much nice

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Speaker 1: to talk to you, Bruce Akin, former president CEO of Methodics.

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Speaker 1: For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to

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