An international gas and oil giant is saying environmental protection is one of its "top priorities" as it lays out arguments in Dunedin regarding drilling exploration plans off Otago's coast.
Environmental Protection Authority hearings started this morning relating to Austrian company OMV's plans to drill an oil and gas exploration well costing about $80 million in the Great South Basin this summer.
Outside the hearing at Distinction Hotel in George St about 25 protesters from Oil Free Otago, some dressed as sharks, are holding placards and singing protest songs.
The hearing's considerations are explicitly limited to the discharge of harmful substances from the drill rig's deck drains.
OMV legal counsel James Winchester said the consent was "very much a precautionary application" and would likely not be needed.
The maximum discharge of a harmful substance would be 250ml and would be diluted through the drainage system.
Some submitters raised concerns the company did not specify which harmful substances would be used.
The company said it did not yet know the precise substances.
However, the volumes were so low and receiving body so large that "even if the most ecotoxic substances are used and then discharged the risk and adverse effects would be negligible," Mr Winchester said.
OMV New Zealand head of exploration, development and production Henrik Mosser said environmental protection was one of the company's "top priorities" and it was spending $40 million NZD in the next three years on emission reduction projects.
It also had an A- rating from the international Carbon Disclosure Project on its carbon reduction initiatives, he said.
Panel member Nicki Crawford questioned whether its carbon reduction applied to the impacts of the oil and gas it sold.
Mr Mosser said it did not and its carbon reduction initiatives mainly related only to the oil and gas the company used itself.
The hearing will continue this afternoon and is planned to last two more days.
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I would think an oil giant could come up with something more imaginative than 'Top Priorities' when trying to pull the wool. After all, Lime have already done that one to death in this town.