Greenpeace activists protest oil giant
A security guard has become an unlikely hero to Wellington protesters.
The protesters, who are trying to get oil giant OMV out of New Zealand, wanted to deliver a 30,000-strong petition to the company, based at the Majestic Centre at Willis St, Wellington, yesterday. But a security guard warned the 100-odd protesters they would be trespassing if they entered the building.
But he went from villain to hero when he told protesters that 99 per cent of people in the building, including himself, supported the cause. He then brokered a deal that he would personally take the petition. OMV workers had taken the day off, he said.
Police and private security were on alert as Greenpeace and other activist groups tried to evict the Austrian oil giant from New Zealand. Eviction notices being stuck to the Majestic Centre windows by protesters were torn down immediately.
Greenpeace activists recently scaled the facade of Wellington’s Majestic Centre to deliver a getout-of-town message to OMV’S offices on the 20th floor. Yesterday’s protest was an attempt to drill the message home.
Greenpeace campaigner Steve Abel said the 30,000 signatures were printed on cards. He originally planned for the cards to be in a fish tank, mounted on a trolley that they would roll into the Majestic Centre foyer. Protesters take issue with OMV’S plans to drill several oil wells off the Taranaki Coast and in the Great South Basin using a 12-storey selfpropelled drill rig, which arrived in the country in June. Earlier this year, OMV submitted a consent application to discharge an unnamed harmful substance within the Great South Basin, off the southern coast. The application prompted a three-day hearing, which started in Dunedin late last month.
Under OMV’S Great South Basin permit, the company is required to drill one exploration well before July 10, 2021. If it wants to hold onto the permit after that, it can only do so on condition it drills two further exploration wells by July 10, 2022.
Abel said: ‘‘The waters . . . are alive with a multitude of rare and endangered species, including dolphins, whales, penguins, albatross, seals and sealions.’’
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an end to new offshore oil exploration permits in April 2018.