Barry Soper: Oil and gas industry shouldn't have been kept in dark by the Government

Doing business with this Government is all about reading the beat of the drum. If you miss a beat, chances are you'll be caught flat footed.

That seems to be the case with the decision they made in April, slapping a ban on the off shore exploration for oil and gas, the lifeblood of our wealthiest province Taranaki.

Just a few weeks before the decision was made, a senior bureaucrat heavily involved in the toing and froing between the Beehive and officialdom, casually inquired whether the eleven thousand jobs at stake were a media creation or based on fact.

That's how scientific the decision was, nothing spelled out about the environmental impact, which appears to simply be conjecture from the Climate Change Minister, Greens co leader James Shaw who was obviously the one driving it.

A bundle of documents released under the Official Information Act's redacted most of a letter written by Shaw to the energiser Minister Megan Woods. He contended it was a simple fact that all the coal, oil and gas that's already been discovered can't be globally burnt if we're to meet our Paris Agreement commitments on global warming. That's why we shouldn't be looking for more, he implored.

He certainly struck a cord with Woods who was initially considering a moratorium on exploration until the issue was considered by the interim committee on climate change which will morph into a Climate Change Commission next year. Shaw's office told her the interim committee had too much work on their plate to consider, like agriculture.

So there was a meeting between the leaders of the two other parties involved in the coalition with Jacinda Ardern but not before she, through officials, went fishing for more information on the state of the oil and gas industry just weeks before making what was a significant decision. As it was, the decision wasn't made by Cabinet, it was made by the coalition parties' leaders with a paper to Cabinet by Woods declaring it as fait accompli.

The oil and gas stakeholders weren't told until late the night before and that job was left to bureaucrats to let them know over the phone. Woods justified that by saying it was a commercial decision and it had to be kept confidential until they announced it.

That's a bit like making a decision to sell state radio and telly but keeping the organisations in the dark until after the decision's been made. Although this is worse they don't own the exploration companies, they're simply stopping them from doing business.

There was no commercial need for secrecy, it wouldn't have affected the block offer for exploration, because there wasn't going to be one. They should have been more up front with the industry rather than simply sending them signals and expecting them to read the beat of the drums.