Oil is black gold. It has brought unprecedented growth in technology and innovations, easing lives, improving health in most countries, and much more… I have calculated: Less than 10 litres of petrol can bring my family, my shopping and my car home from our nearest city 80 km away in less than one hour. It would take me 3 years to walk the same distance carrying my kids, my shopping and the ton of steel and plastic that is my car! Oil is fantastic and I thank you all, the oil industrialists, for this wonderful era of success.

But it comes with serious side effects, which I summarize below. Knowing this, is “growing NZ Oil and Gas capability” really the best thing to do? I am just asking you to reflect, to think. And I suggest ideas on how you could you use your skills and inventiveness, your investing capabilities and your leadership, to continue to innovate and bring progress while restoring life-sustaining resources and at the same time, improving your profits.

Extracting substances from the Earth’s crust leads to a concentration of substances outside of the crust that nature cannot process. You are well aware of the first law of thermodynamics that states that both energy and matter cannot disappear. So extracting these materials that are normally tucked away in our Earth’s crust leads to their build up in the atmosphere and throughout nature. This results in, for example, rising levels of heavy metals in the soil, phosphate in lakes, cadmium in our kidneys and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The latter is our concern here because it comes inescapably from coal and oil combustion and it creates a greenhouse effect that has been proven to have devastating impacts on life on Earth. 97% of scientists agree that climate change is human induced. And this is a good news: it means we, humans, can actually do something about it.

There is enough oil left in the soils to raise the atmosphere’s temperature far above temperatures the biosphere can adapt to. Instead of focusing on extracting as much as possible, you can choose to help the world depend less on oil, for example by developing different engines or renewable energies generators.

Moreover, as the easily accessed oil reserves are mostly emptied now, the techniques to extract oil are increasingly damaging to the ecosystems (e.g. fracking), or take place in increasingly difficult and sensitive places (poles or deep seas). These circumstances mean the effects of accidents will be more and more severe. Particularly in New Zealand, sitting on the Ring of Fire, any installation can, at any time, be toppled despite all the precautions taken. Instead of putting the Earth at risk, the responsible attitude is to start reorienting your activities now.

Financially, the oil and gas industry delivers shrinking profit margins due to the need for increasing investment required for each oil unit. Besides, its return on investment is insecure and also at stake is the relationships with with people, communities, associations and even governments. Social media enables increasing awareness and social action, and engenders unwanted side costs like the Denniston plateau lawsuit and many others. Meanwhile, you are subject to political change which can mean a revocation of contracts, such as in April 2013 in Belize.