What is the EEZ?

The EEZ or Exclusive Economic Zone is the  zone beyond 12 nautical miles and out to the 200 nautical mile mark.  This is huge and is over 20 times the area of New Zealand’s own land mass.

Therefore an area of this magnitude needs a Bill of similar grandeur to protect it.  There is no argument we need some laws to govern it but the draft that was first read and the subsequent changes to it through select committee give an unbalanced weight on the term Economic and less so on the Environmental.

We do not want a repeat of the Deepwater Horizon, BP Oil Spill, in the Gulf of Mexico in our backyard! 

Deepwater oil drilling is classed as anything below 180m below sea level.  Deepwater Horizon was 1.5km to the seabed and the proposed drilling in the Pegasus Basin is approx. 3km!

All deepsea oil drilling should therefore be a prohibited activity under the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and Continental Shelf Act.

With not only the risk of an oil spill of a similar magnitude of Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico we also have the added risk of a potential tsunami if we disturb what NIWA have proposed as a significant threat if there was any seismic or similar disturbance of the sea bed in Cook Strait http://www.niwa.co.nz/no18-2008/huge-undersea-landslide-discovered-in-cook-strait

New Zealand is a party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It is from UNCLOS that our right to use the EEZ for economic purposes arises. This is a privilege not an automatic right and with that privilege comes the condition to “protect and preserve” this environment.  This is clearly outlined in Part XII on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf