Clowns to the right of me

"Bob and Gerry have a bust-up. But is Gerry Brownlee just looking for an excuse to sack the Christchurch City Council and sell its assets? "


Steve Cowan at Against the Current asks the right questions.

Brownlee sees sense

Big man listens to reason

Yesterday in the House, Earthquake Minister Gerry Brownlee said that he expected that all further OICs would be "dealt with before the year's end"
Good. Then 'Makes-the-earth-move' (Indian name) Brownlee can put the appalling Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act to the sword, repeal it, whatever, just so long as that abomination is buried and not brought to the surface again.
And good on Kennedy Graham for prising that from the Minister Responsible for Quakes.
Now, if Kennedy can wake Key up to the stupidity of changing our employment laws to suit the Warner Brothers bully boys and perhaps even stop him from pouring our tax monies into their outstretched claws    hands.

Exxon bails!

"High technical risk" indeed! It's not as if it hasn't been pointed out before, the enormous risk of drilling for oil in the Great South Basin. Gerry must be thanking his lucky stars for the dictatorial powers he's been granted thanks to the Canterbury earthquake, because nothing else is going his way.
"Mr Brownlee may yet lose his other big player, Austrian energy giant OMV NZ, which has three other blocks totalling 48,000sq km, with Thai partner PTTEP Offshore Investment Co (36 percent each), and Japanese company Mitsui Exploration and Production Australia Pty (28 percent)."

Awww!

High technical risk along with 'remote location and tough conditions facing deep sea drillers' are being cited by ExxonMobil as their reasons for pulling the pin on their Deep South plans.'Harsh operating environment' it is Mr Exxon! Why didn't you just ask us? We'd have told you (and did!) that it wasn't a go down there.

Here's the article (hat tip Nick)

The smell of burning rubber

Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee, Solid Energy's Don Elder and L&M Energy's Chris McKeown are 'talking up', 'aggressively pushing' and bullishly describing how 'the rubber is about to hit the road' in their fields of interest: coal-seam gas, urea and diesel production and methane.
That's Big Boy talk from the Energy Men.
The biennial Petroleum Conference in Auckland is giving their passion wings and they are bristling with confidence about their projects.
Elder went all coy though, when asked whether Solid Energy "should be privatised following a moment of controversy the day before when the chief executive of New Zealand Oil & Gas suggested that the Government should sell it's assets to private buyers".
Bit of a wet blanket, that chap, letting the cat out of the bag like that!