Catherine Delahunty Green MP www.greens.org.nz

Oil will be the life-blood of our way of life for a little time to come.

But the Greens think it is environmentally reckless to start a deep water oil drilling programme in one of the most important ecological regions on the planet, when the oil companies don't know how to plug deep water oil wells if anything goes wrong.

Apart from the tragic loss of life, the blowout at BP Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico was an environmental and economic disaster of epic proportions.

This was the largest blowout in history with about 150 million litres of oil being pumped into the marine ecosystem, destroying natural habitats and livelihoods. No-one is quite sure exactly what went wrong. It makes you breathe a sigh of relief that we don't have extensive offshore drilling going on in New Zealand waters or that massive oil tankers aren't crowding Tauranga and our other major ports.

That could change in the next couple of years. The Brazilian oil giant Petrobras has a permit to survey for oil drilling 12,330 square kilometres in the Raukumara Basin off the East Coast.

The Government assures us it is confident that to protect themselves from liability, companies will ensure they will take all precautionary measures to prevent accidents. But in the case of deep sea drilling, this clearly isn't enough.

The Minister for Energy, Gerry Brownlee has admitted that experts are scratching their heads over what went wrong in the deep water spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Even with the most advanced capabilities at our doorstep, a laissez-faire attitude is a recipe for disaster. New Zealand should follow the example of Norway – experienced with deepwater wells - and await the results and recommendations of the Horizon Deepwater well investigation.

If the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico tells us anything, it is a harsh warning that the benefits of offshore drilling can be completely undone in the form of an oil spill that damages sea and coastal ecosystems. As with mining, the conservation estate, the pros and cons need to be weighed up carefully.