OMV Australasia senior vice-president Gabriel Selischi today confirmed ‘‘retrospective trespass notices’’ had been issued to five Greenpeace activists involved in recent occupations of OMV sites and vessels.
That included the three-day occupation of OMV’s New Plymouth office in December.
The notices were issued by OMV NZ following consultation with New Zealand Police and legal advice, he said.
The move meant police would be able to remove the individuals ‘‘should they return to any OMV owned premises, particularly to our operating sites’’, he said.
The company had ‘‘not taken this step lightly’’, but ‘‘OMV’s top priority is the safety of all our staff and contractors working on our sites’’.
‘‘These are high risk environments . . . The repeat illegal actions of these individuals puts the health and safety of our people and the activists themselves at risk.’’
Those to receive the notices included Dunedin-based Oil Free Otago spokeswoman Rosemary Penwarden, who told the Otago Daily Times the move was ‘‘very peculiar’’.
The notice banned her from entering 19 sites related to OMV, including its offices in New Plymouth and Wellington, but also the Maui A and B platforms, located off the Taranaki coast.
The list did not include any Dunedin sites, but did include the COSL Prospector drilling rig and support vessels, currently located 146km south-east of Balclutha.
“I would have to be super-gran to board all of those.
‘‘If OMV are worried about a 51kg grandma disrupting their multimillion-dollar projects they really are in a bad way.
“Do OMV think a trespass notice will frighten me? If so, I’d like to remind them that we kiwis have a strong tradition of standing up to the big boys.
‘‘When the things we love are threatened we do not back down.”
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Ms Penwarden does indeed have a passion, wouldn'ther efforts be more productive targeting wasteful demand rather than supply? It's not the exploration that is causing the problem, it is the waste of limited resources by a planet that is becoming over populated. You can only put so many people into a room with a cupboard of food ..... if you get what I'm saying.
It is always exploration, when systems blow.
Chicken and the egg. Clearly, we are 'exploring' simply because there is demand. Don't blame the oil companies, we're doing this to ourselves, we create the demand. Unprecedented amount of air travel, massive growth in cruise ship travel, all of this burns millions of tonnes of oil, just so we can go 'gad about'. For example, one large cruise ship has the equal amount of emissions per day as one million cars. As for flights, globally over 8 million people fly every day, most are tourists. Modern planes have better fuel consumption, however, they're still pumping a lot of gases into the air. Don't even bother getting me going on plastic. So, really, our best bet must be to reduce demand, because right now, we clearly have massive DEMAND for fossil fuels.
The cruel reality is that we rely on crude oil to develop roads and infrastructure. Fuel for ships to import foods and materials, and to export goods. Diesel for rail and freight haulage. Biofuels still do not solve emission problems.