From the late-1950s to the 1980s, companies with deep pockets fought over oil and gas deposits on and off Taranaki in a modern-day equivalent of the Central Otago gold rush of the 1860s. Taranaki boomed with oil fever and many Kiwi investors became millionaires after the world’s eighth-biggest gas field was developed and more discoveries followed.
But by the 2010s, the exhaustion of the Māui gas field loomed on the horizon and the appetite for oil and gas exploration was shrinking as the spectre of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change grew. In 2018 came Jacinda Ardern’s announcement that the party was over; hydrocarbons were bad for the planet: “There will be no further offshore oil and gas exploration permits granted.”
New Plymouth Mayor Neil Holdom deemed the news “a kick in the guts” but it was not long before a greener, cleaner form of resource exploitation blew fresh hope into the Taranaki, and national, economies: offshore wind farming.
New Zealand’s need for renewable energy is obvious every time electricity generators struggle to meet demand in a cold snap. More capacity is also needed for electrification of the vehicle fleet and industrial heating. If New Zealand is to meet its emissions reductions targets of 100% renewable energy by 2035 and net-zero emissions by 2050, electricity generation needs to rise by about 70%, all of it from renewable sources.
As the Listener reported in March last year, offshore wind farms proposed by international consortiums in the South Taranaki Bight promised to deliver a big chunk of the additional capacity needed by 2050. The area was once branded by the Global Wind Energy Council as “the Saudi Arabia of wind” due to its Roaring Forties location. The proposals could also generate 1000-4000 jobs during construction, and operating and maintaining the wind farms could employ 2500-8000 people. Though it would be years before turbines turned above the water, the last Labour government began work on a regulatory framework and fast-tracked the approval process for three wind-farming projects on land.
Then the government changed. Resources Minister Shane Jones has criticised the long lead times needed for wind farms while talking up the economic benefits of “extracting natural resources from the earth and from the bed of the sea”, which he depicts as “a legitimate part of the New Zealand economy”. In March, he told an offshore energy conference in Hāwera: “Offshore wind is being propelled by a moral belief that this will save the planet and make money. But don’t look to the crown to subsidise it, certainly not while I’m around. I will leave to the accountants and economists the economics of how you are ever going to make a profit from offshore wind farms.”
Eyes on ironsands
The government’s fast-track consenting legislation is a key part of enabling the mineral exploitation Jones favours. Launching the draft mineral mining strategy last month, he pointed to a range of mineral resources on land and at sea that might qualify for fast tracking, including vanadium and titanium in the ironsands off Taranaki. New Zealand needed six times more minerals for low-emissions technology and would no longer be importing from countries with abysmal environmental standards, Jones said. “In order to save the climate, we must mine our way to the future.” (See the Listener feature on clean mining here.)
Which is where Trans-Tasman Resources (TTR) comes in. Now owned by Australian gold and silver miner Manuka Resources, the company for more than a decade has sought to mine ironsands in the South Taranaki Bight. It has a mining permit covering 66ha of seabed from 22km to 37km off the coast. Using a processing ship, it aims to extract iron ore, vanadium and titanium from up to 50 million tonnes of sand a year – depositing most of the sand back on the seabed – over a 35-year timeframe.
Vanadium is used in reinforced steel for tools and construction, but also in large-scale batteries and grid energy storage – important in our transition to renewable energy. TTR’s plans to extract up to 11,000 tonnes a year of vanadium would make New Zealand the world’s third-biggest producer after China and Russia; it estimates vanadium alone could fetch more than $450 million a year on international markets.
TTR claims the venture would directly employ 300 people and generate about $170m in royalties and taxes a year from iron ore alone, though its chairman and executive director, Alan Eggers, says mining is likely for only 14 of the 35-year consent period being sought.
But despite its mining permit, and marine consent approval from the Environmental Protection Authority given in 2017, TTR’s bid to begin mining has been rejected by the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court due largely to uncertainty about the environmental risks. The last ruling erased the EPA’s consent to extract and discharge but in March, the EPA began hearing a fresh application – until the company abruptly withdrew. Eggers, while taking swipes at his environmentalist and iwi opponents, confirmed to the Listener that the company preferred to “take its chances” under the coalition’s proposed Fast-Track Approvals Bill.
If the bill is passed in its current form, decision-making about fast-tracked proposals would be in the hands of just three development-oriented cabinet ministers: Regional Development Minister Jones, Energy and Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop. The public would be largely shut out of the process and projects previously rejected by the courts could get a green light.
TTR is also hoping to explore a much larger area of seabed surrounding its current 66 sq km mining licence for potential future exploitation (see map, below).
Prime wind zone
Leaving aside the environmental objections to seabed mining, the problem is the opportunity cost – the area from where TTR plans to extract ironsand is the same area that offshore wind-farming companies are eyeing. TTR’s application is smack in the middle of the prime wind zone, a 600sq km area defined by the 60m water depth contour line of the continental shelf. The relative shallowness also makes it easier to secure wind turbines to the seabed. Beyond 60m, the depth would require the huge turbines to be mounted on floating steel pontoons anchored to the seabed – technology that is still being developed.
Prospective wind farmers say offshore turbines and seabed mining are totally incompatible and cannot occupy the same space. At least two of the largest wind-farm developers say that if the fast-track consenting regime favours seabed mining, they would have to consider pulling out because the economics could become unworkable.
Eggers maintains the two can co-exist in the South Taranaki Bight “with sensible consultation and co-operation”. He says if their existing mining consent is revoked or cancelled, he would look to sue the government for compensation and loss of future earnings.
Oil and gas drilling
TTR’s proposed site also bisects the Kupe oil and gas mining permit owned by Beach Energy of Adelaide and partners (with which TTR has an assets avoidance agreement). Phase two of Beach’s Kupe drilling programme began late last year. TTR’s plans to explore a much larger area could also conflict with potential renewed oil and gas exploration, with the government this month announcing its intention to lift Labour’s exploration ban.
Whereas TTR has a mining permit, wind farm hopefuls currently have no more status than the old-time Otago gold prospectors. A licensing system for applicants to explore the feasibility of offshore wind projects is still in development. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment expects to grant the first feasibility permits in 2026.
The offshore wind ventures keen on the South Taranaki Bight include BlueFloat Energy (Spain) in a joint venture with New Plymouth-based Elemental Group; Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners backed by the NZ Super Fund; Meridian Energy and Europe-based Parkwind; the Japanese giant Sumitomo Corporation; and Australian company Oceanex. A sixth company, Wind Quarry Zealandia, was also interested in the Bight but has now controversially moved its focus inshore to a site within the Taranaki Coastal Marine Area.
The remaining consortiums in the South Taranaki Bight want to hammer up to 200 single-pile turbines into the shallow depths. In a May 15 briefing paper aimed at government ministers, four of them indicated that if TTR’s application was approved, it would spell the end of New Zealand’s chance to embrace offshore wind energy. Seabed mining would significantly disrupt the seafloor to a depth of 11m, meaning wind farms could not be built until the seabed resettled, possibly decades later. Such factors would push up electricity prices.
“Pulling out would be an option we would absolutely have to consider,” says BlueFloat country manager Nathan Turner. “We would need to consider whether our further plans for a wind farm off Waikato would be financially viable without the South Taranaki Bight prime spot.
“Our working assumption has always been that the TTR project won’t happen, so we haven’t made decisions either way. The risks related to that project have been moving up and down over time.”
Giacomo Caleffi, Copenhagen Infrastructure’s project lead, said: “This is our only proposed project, so pulling out would have to be an option; we haven’t decided yet. TTR’s consenting has not been going well for a few years; now we have the fast-track consenting bill. It’s a big change.”
Under current timeframes, the first wind farm could be operating by 2035. But the briefing paper said a green light for seabed mining “means NZ’s best sites for the lowest cost offshore wind projects could be blocked until at least the 2070s”.
Breaking ranks
Significantly, the paper omitted any mention of Wind Quarry Zealandia, owned by Colorado brothers Patrick and John O’Meara (Patrick is now a Gore-based GP), which has blindsided the competition – and been peer-ostracised as a result – by going for a site closer to land in the coastal marine area (CMA) governed by Taranaki Regional Council. Local iwi will have to be consulted, but the planned site is outside the marine mammal sanctuary created off Taranaki for the critically endangered Māui’s dolphin.
TTR’s mining area is not in the CMA, but it is seeking exploration rights to larger, adjacent areas. “Their mining won’t affect our plans,” Patrick O’Meara says. “We believe there is less environmental impact closer to shore, less impact from cabling, and shorter cabling and piling.” Wind Quarry Zealandia’s application for resource consent to build an offshore wind farm is with the regional council. O’Meara believes the company will also have to meet MBIE’s upcoming feasibility licence requirements. What’s still uncertain is whether fast-tracking would overrule the regional council’s role.
“We were here first,” says O’Meara of the company’s wind-farming rivals. “We started building a relationship with local iwi Ngāti Ruanui, Ngā Rauru and Ngāruahine back in 2020, and that has been very positive. Whether they become investment partners is for iwi to decide.
“Others can criticise, but they know we’ve been working on this significantly longer than them. We think we can set the precedent for a new era for stakeholder involvement in new energy.”
The company’s may be the only wind farm in the running if TTR gets approval, and wind farms are effectively shut out of the 60m contour line in the South Taranaki Bight. It’s no accident that Wind Quarry’s site is within Ngāti Ruanui’s rohe, and the company got a publicly declared tick from iwi leader Te Uraura Nganeko at an offshore forum last year, where all the developers were courting iwi. “I give WQZ five out of 10 and that’s the benchmark for the rest of you,” Nganeko said.
BlueFloat’s Nathan Turner says the company is still a long way from building. But “if TTR mining is not consented, my personal view is there is room for three wind farms in the 60m contour, but only if we all built for 800MW generation with fewer turbines spaced a little closer.
“If TTR gets consent in the next few months, they will need to find a customer, raise finance, secure all their long lead items [specialist vessels and seabed crawlers]. It will be several years before they can start. Offshore wind farms are in exactly the same position once they get feasibility licences.
“If TTR fails consent, they will still have a legally active permit expiring in 2034, but it’s not going to be worth much without a consent.
“Where it gets critical is once feasibility licences are awarded. We need to issue contracts worth tens of millions for seabed and bird surveys, marine animal surveys, and if we don’t have certainty that’s when it will have an impact.”
Port in the middle
Port Taranaki is also waiting to see if it needs to commit to hundreds of millions of dollars on redevelopment required to service offshore wind storage, construction and operations, and to continue servicing petrochemicals, fertiliser, logs, offshore decommissioning and cruise ship visits. The port has eight upgrade scenario options, some of which would require demolition of its landmark, 198m ex-power station chimney. Shane Jones says there is no government money for such high-cost port development, and he wants all relevant ports (Nelson, Napier, Whanganui and Wellington) to work with Taranaki on a joint solution.
Jones told the Hāwera offshore energy conference TTR had a legal right to search for rare earth minerals in the seabed. “Are we to continue to import rare earth minerals from China, or make some trade-offs in New Zealand and start to develop our own resources?”
After his EPA walkout, Alan Eggers told the Listener: “My view is that iwi would do much better financially from investing in ironsand mining than they ever will from offshore wind farms, if they are ever built.”
Addressing a business lunch in New Plymouth last month, Eggers was asked whether TTR would surrender its mining permit if it could not get government approval. “We will get our approval,” was the response.
Opponents unite
Unveiling the draft national mineral mining strategy on May 24, Jones said the aim was to double the value of exports from mining to $2 billion by 2035. “Ultimately, we want to enable major projects by improving decision-making timeframes and giving greater investment certainty, with well-designed projects having a clear and fast path to consent.”
This brought a swift reaction from anti-mining and environmental action groups and iwi, who quickly formed Communities Against the Fast Track (Caft). One of the most organised is Kiwis Against Seabed Mining’s Cindy Baxter, who, alongside the fishing industry and Ngāti Ruanui, has campaigned against seabed mining for 10 years (see “Shifting sands”, opposite page).
“We have always run on the smell of an oily rag and no doubt we will continue to do so,” says Baxter. “But the public is behind us. TTR’s claims have been well and truly refuted by other experts in the field. The company owner, Manuka Resources, is in a very bad financial state and is struggling. [Manuka Resources share value has been sliding downwards for the past five years and shares are currently trading in Australia for less than five cents.]
“Let’s not forget, it’s an Australian-based company and there is absolutely no way they would build a processing plant in Aotearoa. It’s clear the ironsands would be taken immediately offshore and New Zealand would see little in the way of jobs, no matter what the company tries to claim.
“There’s a heap of easily accessible vanadium in Queensland which doesn’t involve digging up the seabed.”
Ngāti Ruanui chair Haimona Maruera says the fast-track bill and TTR’s withdrawal from the EPA hearing “sound alarm bells that the proposed legislation could be used as a back door to gain consent”.
“Ngāti Ruanui intends to use every available course of action both directly and legally should fast-track consenting be used for seabed mining in the South Taranaki Bight. We have only just begun our fight.”
Shifting sands
Groups fear the fast-track bill will allow critical protections to be bypassed.
By Emma Ricketts
Opponents of the south Taranaki Bight seabed mining proposal say they would apply the same rigour to wind-farming proposals in the area regarding environmental safeguards. But they fear the government’s proposed fast-track legislation will lead to Trans-Tasman Resources (TTR) finally getting approval for its plan to mine thousands of tonnes of ironsand a year.
Kiwis Against Seadbed Mining (KASM) and local iwi Ngāti Ruanui have opposed TTR in courtroom battles for a decade. Both groups say the company has failed to show adequate plans to mitigate environmental risks, particularly in relation to the sediment plumes that would be created when depositing the sand back on the seafloor. “That plume will hang in the water column and create dead zones on the seafloor,” says KASM’s Cindy Baxter.
Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Ruanui Trust environment officer Graham Young says this has been the iwi’s central concern, and it will not support TTR’s proposal until it sees mitigation plans that address this. “The difference between seabed mining and on-land mining is that underwater, the sediment plume can travel that much further beyond the site,” Young says. “TTR has had multiple years to prove its case and has failed to do so.”
He says Ngāti Ruanui is particularly concerned a law change could bypass New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf Act. “Our position as a treaty partner is recognised in the law, and so far, the guardrails of that statute have worked.”
Although TTR engaged iwi early on in its proposal, the relationship quickly soured when Ngāti Ruanui insisted on more evidence about how the company would protect the surrounding environment. The EEZ Act ensured the iwi was not cut out of the application process. “The legislation has been very strong in protecting the environment and the interests of Ngāti Ruanui,” Young says.
Baxter says the Fast-track Approvals Bill “takes away all environmental regulations, as far as I am concerned. The Conservation Act, the Wildlife Act; we’ve spent years developing those laws in Aotearoa, and for very good reason.”
Bypassing such protections is particularly risky with a project as experimental as TTR’s, she says. “No one has extracted vanadium from ironsands in New Zealand before, and nothing has been provided to give any certainty around what might happen in the environment. “We can’t just say we need a clean energy revolution, so it’s fine to trash the ocean to get there.”
Both Baxter and Young say they would seek the same environmental safeguards for offshore renewable energy development as for TTR’s proposal. “But,” says Young, “there would be more evidence as there are already examples of offshore wind farms in similar conditions around the world.”
A wind farm’s environmental impact would likely be less widespread than seabed mining, he adds. “Wind turbines are fixed singularly to the floor, and the potential environmental impact is far less than the pollution from seabed mining would be.”
Baxter agrees. “Digging up the seabed for a few wind turbines is not the same as digging up 50 million tonnes per year for several years, then dumping 45 million tonnes of that seabed back down again.”
