On Friday, Australian media reported that the oil giant had called on JP Morgan to sell its New Zealand portfolio, which includes oil exploration and production assets.
This follows on from the oil giant’s announcement last December that it was placing its New Zealand assets under a review process.
Climate campaigner Steve Abel said Shell’s imminent withdrawal from New Zealand shows the Government’s oil drilling programme is now “in its death throes”.
“New Zealand’s biggest oil company is just the latest to abandon oil and gas exploration here, following on from the exits of Petrobras and ExxonMobil,” he said.
“To lose Shell after more than 100 years in New Zealand is a huge blow to the industry and to the Government’s fervent investment of public money in oil drilling.”
Since reports emerged of Shell’s plans to offload its New Zealand portfolio, the company has tried to scuttle the news, claiming it’s still exploring its options.
But Abel doesn’t buy it.
“You don’t have to be a geotechnical scientist to read the signs here - Shell wants out of New Zealand,” he said.
“Prime Minister John Key’s oil program is in tatters. There has been no new oil found in eight concerted years of exploration, and now the biggest rat is fleeing the sinking tanker.”
“The Government urgently needs to quit oil and put in place a clean energy strategy that will power our society and create thousands of jobs in the process.”
No new deep sea oil permits were allocated in the last block offer announcement in December 2015, and of the almost 430,000 square kilometres on offer, there were only successful bids on 12,000 of them.
It was thought that the lack of deep sea permits was because no oil companies showed interest in sticking around for the year to come.
Shell didn’t submit any bids in that process.
Environmental groups like Greenpeace have been fighting Shell’s oil agenda on home turf and abroad for years.
It was hailed a major victory when Shell pulled its oil drilling plans in the Arctic last year, after massive public pressure that included a global petition with more than seven million signatures.
Abel said Prime Minister Key is pushing climate change denialist policies by continuing to insist that New Zealand must look for the very oil that scientists say we can’t burn if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change.
“Upon his return from the Paris Climate Conference in January, the Prime Minister stated he had no intention of scaling back any search for fossil fuels,” he said.
“But even the oil companies are seeing the writing on the wall in terms of New Zealand’s petroleum prospects. At the moment it looks like Key will be the last man on the sinking ship, even after the oil companies have abandoned their posts.
“It’s good news for our oceans coastlines and climate. The people of Otago, Southland and the Chathams, where two of Shell’s exploration permits are, can now breath a sigh of relief because it seems very unlikely anyone will be doing risky deep sea drilling down there for a long time - if ever.”
ENDS