The Ground Between

by Sefton Darby

Paperback

Published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Keen Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Only about 1 in 10 wells drilled for oil and gas exploration ever become part of a viable operation, and only one in a hundred holes drilled looking for mineral resources eventually become part of a mine.”

This was a decent enough read and I found that I learned of obscure, depressing and enlightening facts and stats around the NZ’s government relationship with various extractive industries and how they operate and the many areas in which they appear to fall short in too.

“Under the Crown and Minerals Act a number of resources are ‘owned’ by the government on behalf of all New Zealanders. These are petroleum (covering both oil and gas), gold, silver and uranium, regardless of where they occur. Out to sea the government also lays claim to anything on the seabed and in our exclusive economic zone and continental shelf- the 200 nautical miles of territory that extends out from our coasts.”

I now know that NZ is unusual in that all taxes and royalties gathered from the mining sector accrue to the national budget rather than to local communities. Talk about insult to injury. We later learn that in the four years 2010-2013 the National government collected just over $1.6 billion in royalties from coal, gas and petroleum products, and yet none of that was retained at a local level.

This of course begs the question what in god’s name did they do with all of that money?...They certainly weren’t putting back into the community it came from and very little of it will have been put towards compensating for the horrendous damage caused by all of that ecological damage.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you were to judge this book by its cover, you'd be about right. It's well written, but not brilliant. It's about governing mining, particularly in light of the climate crisis. As the title suggests, it suggests a way forward to having constructive conversations on a polarized topic. If you have an interest in governing of mining, in New Zealand or elsewhere, then you should read this.