Shane Jones: Associate Energy Minister on the projected price rises set to impact commercial gas users

The Associate Energy Minister says reversing natural gas policies will take time. 

Production fell 20 percent in the first quarter - compared on the year before - to 22.85 petajoules. 

Industry spokespeople say available gas is depleting and exploration of new fields is banned.

Shane Jones says the last Government wanted the sector shut down - and faith needs to be restored it has a future. 

"Since 2018 and 2019, when the curtain came down on the industry, people stopped drilling and people lost confidence - that there would be no future for fossil fuel in New Zealand."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now on the gas. It's being predicted that gas prices
are now so high that commercial users will have to
give it up altogether. Customers with contracts expiring are either
not being offered new contracts at all or are having
to pay a lot more for their gas. Shane Jones
is the Associate Energy Minister. Hey, Shane Hi Greening's folks,
what a commercial use is going to do?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Well? This whole area needs a major circuit breaker, obviously,
because sadly, since twenty eighteen and nineteen, when the curtain
came down on the industry, people stopped drilling. People lost
confidence that there would be no future with this fossil
fuel in New Zealand, which is why I'm reversing the

(00:44):
ban and exploring other interventions to gas.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Year and a half, have you made any headway?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
The difficulty is convincing foreigners and convincing the existing industry
that at a future government will not smash smash it
to bits. Look, the reality is we don't have gas.
We're going to have coal. Okay, the other on a
mountain of coal at Huntley or we know.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
We've been traversing these arguments for ages. What happens now?
What happens to a commercial gas Let's say a commercial
gas user has a contract that expires at the end
of this month. What do they do.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well this household gas And obviously, despite the best efforts
of the Climate Change Commission in there and views that
people that are at a household level have to move
away from gas, the reality is we are not creating
and producing enough gas from methodex well methods have already
closed down a number of their gas lines. The commercial available.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Commercial gas users simply have to move to electricity or
something else.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Right, Well, if you just back to what was the
thinking behind Megan Woods and to Cinder, that is what
they want. They wanted to close the gas industry. It's
going to take a bit longer before we can get
more gas out of the ground because it's going to
cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
All right, Shane, By the way, what changes do you
want to see to Act Regulatory Regulatory Standards Bill.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
We're going to trust in the quality of the Select
committee proceedings. When select committees work well, there are a
source of great insight and clarity, and that particular bill
will no doubt go through a refining process at the
Select Committee and when it comes back will make a

(02:38):
call as to the quality of the work that was
carried out by the selectivity.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Okay, thank you, Shane, appreciate it. Shane Jones, Associate Energy Minister.
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