Oil on fire: How mining ignites angry debate
Rob Stock talks to former mining advocate Sefton Darby, who says companies need to do a better job of explaining themselves.
"Internationally some resource companies are starting to make tangible commitments to having grown-up conversations with communities." Sefton Darby, author of The Ground Between, left.
It’s time for both sides of the oil and mining debate to grow up, says author Sefton Darby. The industry, protesters, and especially recent governments are all partly responsible for the incredible levels of anger in the debate over whether oil, gas, coal and other minerals should be extracted in New Zealand, Darby concludes in his new book The
Ground Between published by BWB Texts.
‘‘This is an industry that often engenders anger in the places it operates,’’ says Sefton, who has worked for mining companies, the government and as an independent consultant.
But, Sefton is convinced, there is a better way to achieve what the country should want: ensuring that the right projects get approved, and the wrong projects don’t. Oil and mining companies have done a ‘‘pretty average’’ job of explaining themselves, Sefton says.
‘‘Again and again I have come across companies spending millions of dollars on extensive geological and engineering studies long before they’ve even attempted to gauge whether there is any chance that a community will tolerate a project,’’ he says.
They may ignore the local community for many years, while simultaneously telling the market about how much money they think they will make.
‘‘Many of the conflicts that I’ve seen have come about because people with good questions have been ignored and left to fester and imagine the worst.’’
Engaging with the public is often only motivated by a project or regulatory deadline.
‘‘Some have retreated behind a defence of believing that all opposition is ideologically motivated and hypocritical,’’ Sefton says.
Some believe when projects fail, the problem is that the law allows people to have too much of a voice.
‘‘What needs to change, they suggest, are those troublesome laws, not the way in which they’re listening and engaging.’’
It’s also surprising how many companies seem to think that they can carry out exploration secretly, he says.
Recent National-led governments became cheerleaders for mining and oil exploration, and even changed the Crown Minerals Act writing into law that its ‘‘purpose’’ was to promote prospecting, exploration, and mining for the benefit of New Zealand.
‘‘From the public’s point of view, it became impossible to separate out promoting investment from regulating the industry as a whole,’’ Sefton says.
Concerned members of the public found there were few avenues to have their voices heard by officials.
‘‘You couldn’t write a better script for public discontent if you tried,’’ the author says.
Between 2009 and 2012 events unfolded that polarised the oil and mining debate. There was an explosion at the Pike River Mine, the Rena oil spill, and the government’s ill-fated attempt to open up conservation land to exploration and mining.
In 2009, when trying to open up 7000 hectares of conservation land to mining, Minister of Energy and Resources Gerry Brownlee used some ‘‘absolutely fantastical numbers’’ to explain the potential of the country’s mineral estate, Sefton says.
‘‘While most (but not all) of the industry responded enthusiastically to the proposals, environmental organisations declared it to be an exercise in promoting an industry that was ‘rip shit and bust’.’’
‘‘After large scale protests, the government backed down, but the reputation of the industry was left in tatters and the anti-mining movement was rejuvenated.’’
Darby says: ‘‘To be fair, there were thousands of Gerrys around the world in 2008-2009, government ministers who thought that the resource boom would save them from the messy aftermath of the global financial crisis.’’
He also thinks Brownlee was ‘‘poorly advised’’ by some in industry and in government.
Sefton served as external affairs manager at the gold and silver mine in Waihi, and was responsible for negotiating an expansion of the mine with the local community.
‘‘It was easily the hardest job I’ve ever done,’’ he says.
He knows some will come to his book with suspicion as a result, especially as he moved next to become the national manager of minerals for the government in Wellington.
People have a tendency to lump the entire extractive industry into a single undesirable box, says Sefton. And, he says: ‘‘We are sometimes the hypocrites that the industry accuses us of being; I see perilously little change in consumption habits, and even fewer incentives provided to change those habits.’’
Anti-mining has become associated with the left of Kiwi politics.
Some of the fault may lie with industry tying its colours to the right, but Sefton warned: ‘‘The industry won’t get anywhere praying only for right-wing deliverance.’’
How might the quality of the oil and gas debate improve?
‘‘The starting point is deceptively simple,’’ Sefton says. ‘‘Treating everyone involved with calm respect rather than as opponents to be silenced.’’
‘‘I think that ‘grown-upness’ probably has a few different pieces to it though. Some empathy with what motivates the other side rather than just chalking it up to greed or naı¨ve ideology. Some respect for everyone involved in the discussion, rather than characterising people as being stupid, ignorant or evil.’’
‘‘Those kinds of conversations are really hard. I’ve not been great at them in the past. But just being angry and right all the time doesn’t really take us anywhere.’’
There are signs some companies are learning.
‘‘Internationally some resource companies are starting to make tangible commitments to having grown-up conversations with communities, conversations in which the word ‘hypocrite’ is never mentioned.’’
But, Sefton says, the way forward also requires better, fairer government, fully accounting for the long-term environmental costs of extraction projects, thinking about how money earned from extraction is spent, and for lobbyists to be subject to ‘‘a bit of radical transparency’’.
And, he adds: ‘‘My big wish here is for a really concerted attempt at restoring the independence, impartiality and transparency of the public service rather than them just being – as one commentator put it the other day – ‘henchmen to politicians’.’’