New Zealand said on Monday it would pass laws by the end of this year to reverse a ban on offshore oil and gas exploration, and take urgent steps to remove regulatory hurdles to import LNG amid energy shortages.
The law would end the ban, in place since 2018, on exploration outside onshore Taranaki, an energy-rich region on the country’s North Island as the right-of-centre government plans to lure investment to the country’s oil and gas sector.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said severe shortages over the last few weeks had led energy prices to spike to some of the highest levels among developed economies.
“We are responding to a situation as I said New Zealand should never have seen in the first place,” Luxon said during a media briefing, and urged opposition parties to support the bill.
“It would be the sensible, common sense thing to do if they genuinely cared about New Zealand’s energy security.”
The previous centre-left Labour-led government banned offshore petroleum exploration.
Natural gas production fell by 12.5% in 2023 and a further 27.8% in the first three months of 2024, triggering a nationwide energy shortage as generators switched to more coal and diesel to power the grid, Energy Minister Simeon Brown said.
Renewables including hydro,…