Taranaki has always been a reasonably wealthy province thanks to its abundance of rain and an attendant dairy industry. But they went up a notch in 1959 with the discovery of Kapuni One, a gas and condensate producing well. More good fortune ten years later when in 1969 the Maui gas field was discovered by a joint venture of British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, and Todd Petroleum. It was considered to be a “giant” field at the time of discovery.
New Plymouth, a far flung entity on the western reaches of New Zealand and about as far away as you can get from a major centre, became a boom city.
I had always hoped that a similar discovery might one day be made near Castlepoint bringing bounteous wealth to the Wairarapa. It has been said that there are 17 untapped oil producing basins in and around New Zealand and all have the potential to be highly beneficial. Norway made a major offshore discovery in 1969 which has contributed towards the growth of that country’s sovereign fund of approximately $875 billion.
North Sea Oil was Great Britain’s great saviour.
But if the nutty Greens have their way a windfall for Wairarapa is highly unlikely. In April the Amazon Warrior, the world’s largest seismic survey ship was carrying out exploratory work for Statoil and Chevron, but was disrupted by Greenpeace boat Taitu which intercepted the survey ship about 50 nautical miles off our coast.
Former Green Party co-leader and ex-Australian Marxist Russel Norman was on the Taitu directing operations.
No surprises there.
The Green party are of course just socialists in disguise; well meaning, but socialist’s none-the-less. The last thing they want is for the current economic system to succeed. The fuel that fires up the free enterprise engine is therefore a natural target.
Marxist-Leninism without any forethought seems like a good cause; a powerful state creating wealth distributed from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, as a result of which classes would disappear, and with them even the state itself.
Unfortunately the wealth never eventuates, and the state, far from withering away, becomes brutal. The nationalisation of all commerce inevitably results in the shortage of consumer goods.
The latest in the long list of failed socialist states, oil rich Venezuela, has all-but destroyed itself creating shortages of among other things toilet-paper and soap. It’s been said if they tried socialism in the Sahara they would eventually run out of sand.
Communism has killed on average a million people a year for a century, far more than any other “ism” let alone what the Marxists call “capitalism” and the rest of us call freedom. And yet there is still a hard-core of dreamers, egged on by large chunks of the media, who believe it’s the answer to all the world’s problems.
Remember Jeremy Corbyn nearly made it in Britain and Bernie Sanders gave Hillary a run for her money in America.
I’m just wondering if I can find a big enough motor and sufficient petrol for the Taitu to send Russel Norman back to Australia!
0 comments :
Post a Comment