Oil tanker with 40,000 barrels waiting months off Taranaki coast
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English - May 13, 2020 06:21 - 6 minutes - 6.22 MBNews Homepage Download Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
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When New Zealand oil company Tamarind Taranaki went into liquidation in November last year, it left the government holding a big fat oily baby.
Laden with 40,000 barrels or 6000 tonnes of crude oil, the FPSO Umuroa sits just 50 kilometres off the Taranaki coast.
It looks like a ship, but because it's attached to the Tui oil field it is considered oil infrastructure and its removal will not begin until later this year at the earliest.
This means the FPSO Umuroa and its crew, will sit idle and potentially uninsured over winter.
RNZ First Up executive producer Jeremy Parkinson has more.