Perth protest rally targets oil and gas giant Chevron’s New Zealand operation

A large and noisy rally tar­get­ing off­shore hydro­car­bon cor­por­a­tion Chev­ron has taken place out­side the New Zea­l­and con­su­late in Perth on the morn­ing of Tues­day 12 May 2015.

The protest was called by the Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and (MUNZ) and Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) to alert the New Zea­l­and pub­lic to the poor prac­tices of Chev­ron, that have led to major dis­putes in the Aus­trali­an off­shore oil and gas industry and around the world.

Chev­ron are a new entrant into the New Zea­l­and oil and gas industry and it was recently awar­ded three off­shore explor­a­tion per­mits in the Pegas­us Basin, in part­ner­ship with StatOil. Chev­ron is the oper­at­or.

Chev­ron is the oper­at­or of Australia’s largest LNG (liquified nat­ur­al gas) pro­ject Gor­gon, on the remote north­ern coast of West­ern Aus­tralia, which has dis­ap­poin­ted loc­al com­munit­ies by fail­ing to meet com­mit­ments for loc­al jobs and to loc­al busi­nesses, poor safety and oth­er con­di­tions for work­ers, massive cost over­runs and pro­ject mis­man­age­ment in its con­struc­tion phase.

A let­ter was presen­ted to the Con­su­late for the New Zea­l­and Gov­ern­ment detail­ing work­ers con­cerns at the way Chev­ron oper­ates.

Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and Nation­al Sec­ret­ary Joe Fleet­wood says the pres­ence of Chev­ron is not wel­comed by New Zea­l­and mari­time work­ers.

“Our mem­bers work in this industry, we sup­port respons­ible drilling with high safety stand­ards, but we do not sup­port com­pan­ies that have a bad envir­on­ment­al record and anti-work­er agenda enter­ing our industry.”

Mr Fleet­wood says the nat­ur­al resources of New Zea­l­and must be used to the bene­fit of New Zea­l­and work­ers and the people of New Zea­l­and, not simply to boost profits for mul­tina­tion­al oper­at­ors.

ITF Pres­id­ent Paddy Crum­lin says Chev­ron have a record of anti-work­er activ­it­ies and oth­er bad prac­tices in their glob­al oper­a­tions.

“We are alert­ing the New Zea­l­and pub­lic that this oper­at­or has a very dubi­ous record and Aus­trali­an work­ers have exper­i­enced that first hand.”

The rally was the first step in the New Zea­l­and link in what has become a glob­al cam­paign to demand Chev­ron respect the com­munit­ies they oper­ate in.