The LNG terminal is on ice 'till after the election. Shane Jones told Ryan Bridge Today as much last week.
The Taranaki project hasn't been green lit by Cabinet and there's no way it will be pre-election. There's also no way a contract of that sort would be signed by what is basically a caretaker government.
The Methanex closure buys time, but how much, we don't know.
The thing they said we need, the terminal, is now at the whims of the election and coalition talks.
Businesses and factories don't close just because of costs, they close because of uncertainty. Investment dries up. You need reassurance you've got inputs to produce outputs.
How many more closures will we see before we have options, and back-up options, signed, sealed, and delivered?
In Australia, they're just waking up to the fact data centres run 24/7 and therefore, when the sun don't shine and wind don't blow during a cold winter's evening, these beasts need a power source.
There's an energy conference there this week and business leaders are telling Albanese they need coal and gas back-ups to operate his $200 billion promised pipeline of data centres.
The problem with politicians is that we vote for them. To appeal to use, they do and say things that aren't necessarily in our long-term interests.
Case in point, Trump's looking at a diesel export ban to lower prices in the US to try and lower gas prices ahead of the midterms.
The only upshot, if we can call it that, of this year's squeeze on oil and 2022's electricity crunch is that voters are alive to the fact we actually need a plan to keep the country running, preferably one that actually gets delivered.
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
5 comments:
Why are we in this trouble ?
Unbelievably, its because Ardern woke up one morning, and without consulting anyone, decided that she was going to save the planet by stopping NZ from burning gas.
Oh, how very kind of her !
Too bad that she ruined so many thousands of NZers lives and businesses.
I note that the Sydney Morning Herald welcomed her to her new expensive house - how little do they know about her.
Must have read her book, and believed that she was capable saving the world.
This LNG terminal is the most infuriating story. There is gas all around NZ but we won't let them drill for it because of the earth.
But it is perfectly ok for the earth if the US drills its fields, burns gas to transport gas to a compression terminal where huge amounts of gas are burned to cool and compress the methane and pump it onto ships. Those ships then burn diesel for thousands of miles to get here where yes more gas is burned to gasify the LNG.
And we have to pay $2b for the privilege.
On what planet does that make any sense at all? I am obviously taking too many hallucinogens.
Anon 11.03
Thanks for revealing to the Greenies the overall eco cost of getting someone else's energy to NZ.
So true.
It’s not just gas we won’t drill for and which we prefer to import at great cost.
There’s coal too.
We bring coal in from Indonesia to burn in the Huntly Power Station, to keep the lights on in Auckland.
The station burns coal now, when it was altered to run on gas as well. But that ran out, thanks to Jacinda.
There used to be a coal mine just over the hill which fed the station on a conveyor belt.
The mine’s still there. Coal too.
But we don’t want to use it so we can pretend we’re saving the planet. Better to ship it in from Indonesia.
That makes much more sense.
“aren't necessarily in our long-term interests”?! We don’t do long term interests in this country! If we did we would have known that the prosperity of a country comes with reliable and affordable energy - and plenty of it.
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