A Love Story That Was Over Before It Began

The Minister in Heat - “We’re Going to Drill, Baby, Drill!”

It’s 2025 and Shane Jones - Regional Development Minister, NZ First’s resident bulldozer, and self-declared “Minister for Getting Shit Done” - is having a full-blown erotic episode with the fossil-fuel industry.

“I want to see rigs on the horizon again,” he purrs to anyone with a microphone. “We are going to open up exploration acreage like never before - seismic ships, drilling rigs, the whole kaboodle!” He says the word kaboodle the way other men say “lingerie.”

At a New Plymouth petroleum conference he went full romance-novel - “I’m absolutely determined to see the sector rejuvenated, revitalised and, dare I say it, re-erected.” The audience of geologists shifted uncomfortably in seats that suddenly felt very warm.

The Industry’s Polite Yawn - “Cheers Shane, But We’re Actually Full”

Meanwhile, in the executive suites of Vienna, Sydney and Houston, the response is the corporate equivalent of leaving someone on read for six months.

OMV, Beach Energy and the Todd family office have already done the sums. They’ve sucked Taranaki drier than a church biscuit after morning tea. What’s left requires billions in capex for returns measured in “maybe, if the oil price triples and Jesus personally holds the drill bit.”

When asked if they’ll be rushing back now that Shane has repealed the offshore ban, one anonymous CEO reportedly replied - “Mate, we’d have more chance of profit drilling for unicorns in Parliament’s basement.”

“Fast-Track Me Harder, Daddy” – Shane’s Legislative Kink List

Undeterred, Jones keeps turning up with ever more extravagant bouquets of red-tape bonfires.

“We’re going to fast-track everything that moves and some things that don’t!”
“Crown Minerals Act amendments will be so pro-industry they’ll need a cigarette afterwards.”
“I’ve told officials - if a project creates one job and one dollar of GDP, it’s going on the fast-track list. One job. Could be a deckhand. Could be a pie warmer.”

He bragged to RNZ that officials were “working through the night” on his wish list. Sources say the officials were mostly working through the night on their CVs.

The Geology That Ghosted Us

Here’s the bit Shane never mentions in his fever dreams: the easy stuff is gone. Kapuni, Maui, Kupe, Pohokura - all peaked before most current MPs were born. The remaining prospects have names like “Barque,” “Toutouwai” and “Wherry” because oil companies ran out of Māori place names and started using whatever the intern heard at kindy that week.

One leaked investor presentation described the Taranaki Basin as “mature to super-mature” - industry code for “we’ve already taken the kidneys and one lung, now we’re just waiting for the death certificate.”

“I’ve Got a List Longer Than My…” – The Fast-Track Foreplay That Went Nowhere

Jones loves waving his infamous Schedule 2A list like it’s the Kama Sutra of resource consents.

“This list is going to turbo-charge the economy!” he thunders. The list duly included a few oil and gas projects that had been sitting in drawers since 2017, covered in dust and despair.

Within weeks the companies attached to those projects issued statements that read like polite breakup texts -

“We note the government’s support… however we have no current plans to progress this opportunity.”
“The project remains under review… indefinitely.”
“We are prioritising capital discipline and shareholder returns.” (Translation: we’re not spending ten billion to lose eight billion while you shout at clouds, Shane.)

The Final Rejection Text - “It’s Not You, It’s the Net Present Value”

Even the government’s own Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment quietly admitted in a briefing that new offshore gas discoveries were “unlikely to be economic at current prices.” Shane responded the way all men respond to devastating news: by pretending he didn’t hear it and announcing another press conference.

Epilogue - A Minister Alone With His Rig

So here we stand in 2025. The planet gently cooks. The wind farms spin. The solar panels multiply like rabbits on Viagra. And Shane Jones is still out on the Taranaki shoreline at sunset, holding a flare gun to the sky, whispering sweet nothings to an industry that cashed the cheque, took the money, and left him with nothing but a hard-hat and a dream.

“I’ll make you come back,” he promises the empty ocean.

The ocean, like every multinational that ever operated here, doesn’t even bother to block his number. It just keeps eroding the coastline, one cynical wave at a time.

If this struck a chord, you will find more hard truths, sharp edges and the occasional laugh at www.regenerationhq.co.nz/satire. We can do better and we should expect better, starting today.

Shane Jones and the Great Kiwi Oil Mirage