Stetsons at dawn? Even in their wildest moments of untrammelled optimism, the Greens - along with the wider environmental lobby - would struggle to come up with something which so marvellously helps their cause to quite the degree that the Anadarko Petroleum Corporation has managed to do.
The ghost of J.R. Ewing was already stalking the blogs long before the Texas-based oil exploration giant began its highly controversial deep-water drilling programme on Monday in the Taranaki Basin and within New Zealand's exclusive economic zone.
For many of those who only see environmental evil in deep-water drilling, and those who have yet to make up their minds, the only difference between the worlds inhabited by Anadarko and the fictional Ewing Oil is that the former company's headquarters are in Houston, not Dallas.
The current script also requires a villain of similar proportions, and in Anadarko those campaigning against deep-water drilling have the perfect example. The likes of Greenpeace, which has been trying to block Anadarko's programme either on the water or in the courtroom, do not have to spell out the word ''cowboy'' in both its meanings. The public already has a stereotypical view of oil companies, one that not even the best public relations that money can buy can shift.
In Anadarko's case, it is doubly difficult. It was a part-owner of the blown well responsible for the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Anadarko later forked out about $4 billion to BP, the majority owner, to settle various claims the two companies were making against one another, plus clean-up obligations.
No matter how many awards you have received for technical excellence - and Anadarko has won more than a few - the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon well is a millstone which the companies' critics will forever hang around its neck.
That Anadarko's arrival in New Zealand may be the best news that the Greens' peak oil campaign has received in a long-time could be judged from last weekend's beach protests against the drilling ship. They may have been sparsely attended, but they did take place. The drilling vessel has provided a focus not only for the debate on the environmental risks of deep-water drilling, but for a much wider one on fossil fuel shortages.
The Greens' push for the country to shift far further towards renewable energies has stalled somewhat. Their warnings of oil shortages to come have failed to strike home with gas-guzzling New Zealanders who fill their petrol tanks without any thought for the environment.
The Greens' master stroke was to get its former co-leader, Jeanette Fitzsimons, on to Vega, the yacht that repeatedly infringed the exclusion zone around the drilling ship. As someone who knows all the arguments backwards surrounding the future of fossil fuels, she was in her element.
Her unstinting efforts in relentlessly pushing for Greens-based solutions within a largely unsympathetic Parliament gave her huge stocks of credibility. That transformed the on-the-water protest into something more than just another Greenpeace stunt.
Had she been arrested, more than a few in middle New Zealand would have sided with her. National would have been nervous about such an eventuality shifting public opinion, which largely backs its more gung-ho approach.
There would therefore have been some relief in the Beehive that officials did not step in to uphold the law, denying Greenpeace the opportunity to grandstand.
In getting a former MP on to Vega rather than a current one, the Greens appeared to put just enough distance between themselves and Greenpeace should things have gone horribly wrong on the high seas.
The upshot, however, is that the drilling continues. Ideally for the Greens, the drilling programme will fail to find any commercially viable oilfields. A major strike would be the worst possible news for the Greens by removing a major incentive to use renewable energy. It would be cheap oil, not peak oil.
Anadarko would suddenly find itself removed from pariah status to being the saviour of the economy, especially if production was at a level which made New Zealand a net exporter of oil.
In briefings to ministers covering exploratory drilling, officials noted up to 8000 jobs in Taranaki were either directly or partly attributable to the province's oil and gas resources. They also pointed out future discoveries could yield more than $5 billion.
When it came to potential environmental damage, ministers were told ''catastrophic'' offshore well blowouts were rare,
''with one every few years'' worldwide. The relatively small number of wells drilled in New Zealand suggested a well blowout was ''unlikely''. However, the ''true likelihood was unclear'' but could be affected by oilfield pressure and the depth of the drilling.
Ministers swallowed this bob-each-way bureaucratese. But it is not ministerial minds the Greens have to work on changing - National will simply ignore the Greens' call for a ban on deep-water drilling.
It is Labour minds that will need convincing. And, as on other issues, the caucus is split between environmentalists who do not want the Greens to get all the kudos for opposing deep-water drilling and those MPs who fear the Greens' real agenda is to stop all mining and drilling for oil.
The difference is the Greens are using the policy to try to attract the relatively small number of voters needed to reach their target of 15% of the vote at next year's election. Labour's ambivalence reflects a fear of losing a relatively large number of votes by coming down on one side of the argument.
David Cunliffe has attempted to defuse the row by saying Labour would potentially support Anadarko's drilling if it met best-practice and environmental and clean-up standards, something the company has yet to achieve.
At some point he will have to come off the fence. In the interim Labour's position is about as clear as the answer to that famous question: Who shot J.R.?
- John Armstrong is The New Zealand Herald political correspondent.
