Trans Tasman maritime unions meet with NZ politicians in Chevron campaign

A glob­al cam­paign against oil oper­a­tor Chevron has come to New Zealand, with mar­itime unions say­ing the com­pa­ny has a bad record of deal­ing with local com­mu­ni­ties around the world.

New­ly elect­ed Mar­itime Union of Aus­tralia Deputy Nation­al Sec­re­tary Will Tracey, lead nego­tia­tor for the off­shore oil and gas indus­try in West­ern Aus­tralia, met with a group of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans in Welling­ton on 22 July 2015 to raise aware­ness of prob­lems that local com­mu­ni­ties have expe­ri­enced with Chevron.

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

Mr Tracey says that unions under­stand Chevron has begun con­sul­ta­tion with their local stake­hold­ers.

He says he has a per­son­al inter­est in bring­ing this cam­paign to New Zealand, as he has strong fam­i­ly con­nec­tions to the Welling­ton area with imme­di­ate fam­i­ly from the Hon­goe­ka Bay Pa, as well as liv­ing there as a young boy. He is affil­i­at­ed to the Ng?ti Toa iwi on his grandfather’s side and Ng?i Tahu on his grand­moth­ers.

“We want to ensure all of these stake­hold­ers receive the full pic­ture of Chevron’s activ­i­ties around the world. We are talk­ing to work­ers, politi­cians, envi­ron­men­tal groups, iwi, and local com­mu­ni­ties about prob­lems with Chevron’s engage­ment with indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties, their stew­ard­ship of the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment, and their work­force rela­tions.”

The vis­it fol­lows a protest out­side the New Zealand con­sulate in Perth, West­ern Aus­tralia, on 12 May 2015, where Aus­tralian and New Zealand mar­itime work­ers were joined by sup­port­ers to reg­is­ter their con­cerns with Chevron enter­ing the New Zealand off­shore indus­try.

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

Mr Fleet­wood says Mar­itime Union mem­bers work in the off­shore oil and gas indus­try, but did not sup­port com­pa­nies that have a bad envi­ron­men­tal record and anti-work­er agen­da enter­ing our indus­try.

“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. Chevron have failed to deliv­er else­where and we are warn­ing the peo­ple of New Zealand to be wary of this cor­po­ra­tion.”

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.