In the late teens New Zealand went all in on Net Zero. The government itself was going to be Net Zero by 2025 (which never happened).The islands have a lot of nat gas offshore, but exploration was banned. However in 2024…
New Zealand to push through law to reverse ban on oil and gas exploration
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/new-zealand-push-through-law-reverse-ban-oil-gas-exploration-2024-08-26/
New Zealand said on Monday it would pass laws by the end of this year to reverse a ban on offshore oil and gas exploration, and take urgent steps to remove regulatory hurdles to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) amid energy shortages.
Unfortunately these things take time to reverse, and the nat gas supply has been shrinking.
New Zealand’s gas market has been moving from self-sufficient to structurally tight. Domestic output has almost halved in the last 7 years, falling from an average 415 million m³/month in 2017 to 215 million m³/month in 2025, stripping out the buffer that once covered seasonal swings and dry-year hydro shortfalls.
The drought-driven winters of 2024–2025 exposed a new reality: as hydro weakened, the country’s power system leaned harder on thermal generation just as gas supply was tightening, triggering sharp spikes in electricity and gas prices and forcing repeated curtailments at large industrial users.
The country is now looking at importing LNG to fill the gap. From last month:
New Zealand Shortlists Proposals to Build First LNG Import Plant
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-09/new-zealand-shortlists-proposals-to-build-first-lng-import-plant
The plant would come online as soon as 2027 or early 2028, Energy Minister Simon Watts said in a statement on Monday in Wellington.
In the meantime winter is only a few months away.
DB2