Shane Jones oil and gas legislation cock up is hilarious

Jesus wept this is hilarious, the very clever Marc Daalder at Newsroom destroys Shane Jones and his legislative cock ups…

The mysterious case of the Govt’s stalled oil and gas renaissance

Legislation to enable more gas drilling was originally postponed to February after a drafting error but now might be delayed until May

Analysis: Nearly four months after it was due to be passed, the Government’s legislation to repeal the 2018 ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration is nowhere to be seen.

Now, with a three-week recess looming, it seems the delay could stretch out to almost five months from the mid-December deadline originally set for passing the bill.

For the Government, it’s been a blunt lesson about acting in haste and repenting in leisure. The policy development, legislative drafting and public consultations for the repeal bill were all rushed – the select committee allowed just five days for submissions, including over a weekend.

Then, just days before the law was to be passed and finalised, the fossil fuel industry raised concerns with a passage that appeared to increase the collateral and other obligations prospective drillers faced, rather than decrease them as Resources Minister Shane Jones had intended.

At issue were the decommissioning requirements – what oil and gas developers would be required to do to close off wells when they were complete. The previous Labour government passed stringent new rules to avoid a repeat of the Tui saga, when the taxpayer was left with a $440 million bill to clean up a well after the operator Tamarind Resources folded. Jones and the industry say those changes went too far and want to weaken them alongside the repeal of the 2018 exploration ban.

Once the drafting error was spotted, the bill went back to the drawing board, with hasty passage promised for February when Parliament resumed sitting after summer. February came and went, however, with no sign of the legislation’s return.

On March 11, Newsroom asked Jones about the status of the bill.

“We’re working on it as soon as possible. We need to ensure that any rehabilitation obligations in the legislation are not too onerous. After all, if you look at the North Sea, the whole place is riddled with oil wells and such and we want to make sure that we don’t overburden our people,” he said.

No other substantive changes to the bill were being considered, he said – it was all about the decommissioning rules.

Six sitting days later, on March 27, and the legislation still hadn’t resurfaced.

“The policy work is well and truly underway. I’ve got to make sure I’ve got all elements of our three parties. We haven’t lost our zest for passing that bill,” Jones told Newsroom.

…let me see if I can get this completely straight.

Shane Jones huffs and puffs about war on woke and screams drill baby drill, but screws up the legislation so much that the Fossil Fuel Industry don’t want to touch it because it will demand more in environmental regulations than the old legislation?

God I love this level of political incompetence.

This should be leading all news headlines.

 

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