Inside the minds of the oil rig-climbing activists

It had been a long day.

Extinction Rebellion protesters Nick Hanafin and Siana Fitzjohn climbed aboard the oil rig COSL Prospector just after 10am on March 3, 2020, as it powered its way through the calm Cook Strait to Taranaki.

“It was super, super intimidating coming up to it, and having that physical sense of fear,” Fitzjohn recalls. But once they’d decided how to board it, via an anchor line, and climbed from their inflatable boats to the still-moving rig, adrenaline and training kicked in.

They attached a flag to the anchor line, and tied themselves securely, with multiple ropes, in an area below the main deck of the rig, which had been contracted by Austrian oil giant OMV.

Hours passed.

Some of their interactions with the COSL Prospector’s captain and crew were formal, others jocular.

They were served prohibition notices prepared by Maritime New Zealand. (Fitzjohn accepted hers, Hanafin refused to take it.)

A radio was lowered to Hanafin at one point, and the rig’s captain said they were violating New Zealand marine law and the Crown Minerals Act, and they needed to surrender themselves.

Hanafin: “I replied over the radio to the captain that we were here because he was in violation of the laws of nature, and that the actions that they were undertaking were jeopardising the lives of billions of people in coming years.”

That prompted a cheer from rig workers, some of whom just wanted to have a chat or a laugh with them, Hanafin says. “We didn’t encounter any stressed people – apart from, perhaps, the captain.”

Day turned into night, and Fitzjohn dozed off while perching on a horizontal pipe. About 1am, she was jolted awake when her backpack, which contained her water bottle, dropped into the water.

(Earlier, crew had hooked and taken away the protesters’ tent bag.)

“When you get tired climbing, that’s when the risks of making a mistake increase,” Fitzjohn says. “At that point, we called off the occupation.”

The company helicoptered them to shore later that day.

At the time, OMV’s senior vice-president for Australasia, Gabriel Selischi, told the NZ Herald considerable resources were diverted to deal with the protest, and he expected regulators to take action.

BusinessNZ chief executive Kirk Hope told the newspaper: “If this was a small company that was putting their employees in this situation there’s no question about them being prosecuted.”

The industry’s view at the time was posited by John Carnegie, the boss of Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand (now Energy Resources Aotearoa) who called the protest “dangerous and stupid”.

“We respect the right to protest but it has to respect people’s safety, the law and the legal rights of others.”

(Hanafin says the biggest risk from the protest was to themselves, and the experienced crew didn’t face any unusual risks.)

Months passed.

In July 2020, the Business Ministry (MBIE) wrote to Hanafin and Fitzjohn requesting they attend a formal, recorded interview. After taking legal advice, they refused.

It took until October the following year for MBIE to decide to prosecute – charging them with interfering with a ship used in mining operations, under section 101(b) of the Crown Minerals Act.

They pleaded guilty.

In July this past year, Judge Gerard Lynch declined the pair’s application for a discharge without conviction. The application “fails by a very wide margin”, he said.

Sentencing occurred in the Christchurch District Court in February.

Hanafin was sentenced to 100 hours community work, and Fitzjohn to 80 hours, with each having to pay reparation to OMV of $5000.

(Paying reparations to OMV is a “bitter pill to swallow”, Hanafin says, while Fitzjohn calls it “borderline hilarious”. )

It was the first time someone had been convicted and sentenced under the so-called “Anadarko Amendment” to the Act.

Justice was done, some would say. The protesters were punished, their actions denounced, and a deterrent sent to the public.

Others would say it’s an interesting juxtaposition that activists are being prosecuted as the climate crisis deepens.

The sentencing comes as protest laws are tightened around the world.

In New Zealand, there’s a proposed Private Member’s Bill – initially proposed by National’s Simeon Brown and taken over by his colleague, the Ōtaki MP Tim Costley – which would create a new offence for damaging or obstructing a major road, tunnel, or bridge.

Questions remain. Do Hanafin and Fitzjohn regret their actions, and have activist groups been deterred? Ultimately, did it change anything?

On a Saturday morning in May 2013, MPs met under urgency to pass an amendment to the Crown Minerals Act.

Nick Smith, who was conservation minister at the time, moved the bill’s third reading, saying the petroleum and minerals sectors made important contributions to the country’s economy, and were the backbone of many communities.

Crude oil was New Zealand’s fourth-largest export, worth more than $2 billion a year – “but the potential for growth is even greater,” Smith said. The original amendment act, passed weeks earlier, sent a signal to investors of a “supportive regime that requires high standards of its operators”.

Labour’s Moana Mackey, however, called it a shameful, draconian piece of legislation, which extended a ban on protest from the beaches out to the high seas.

Gareth Hughes, of the Green Party, said the bill would fix mistakes in an Act passed just weeks before, but not yet come into effect, while trying to “slip in some sneaky changes to benefit its mates in the oil industry”.

There was no select committee process, no regulatory impact statement, and little public scrutiny.

“It is sending the message that protest is effective and it is laying down a challenge to protesters that the industry is scared of the work they are doing.”

Fast-forward to February of this year, and Siana Fitzjohn, 32, an English tutor, talks from her house on the outskirts of Christchurch, with a bevy of animals – rabbits, ducks, guinea pigs, a magpie, and massive dog – underfoot, perched on furniture, and wandering the huge yard outside.

She harks back to 2013, saying while the government was wrong to make the amendment it almost became an incentive.

“The fact that the Government brought that law in to deter people made us – well, made me at least – keen to prove that that wouldn’t be the case,” she says.

“It’s like a red rag to a bull.”

(Hanafin, 44, says this wasn’t his motivation – rather it was the act of “an oil rig coming into our borders to drill for oil in a climate crisis”.)

Was OMV acting within the law? Yes, Fitzjohn says. “That’s the problem.”

Legal and moral are not the same thing, she says.

“At the moment, we’ve got a legal system that supports and justifies and protects ecocide and behaviours that severely damage living systems on the Earth. So I don’t think the illegality of our actions is a good measure of whether or not they were justified.”

The legal system demands law-breakers justify their actions, she says, even though it’s harder to justify actions like deep-sea drilling.

“If we wanted a legal justification for our behaviour it was that the law that we were charged with was brought in under urgency and didn’t go through a due democratic process, and that we would have opposed deep sea drilling by legal means, but the legal means weren’t there because it was kept from public consultation deliberately so that there wouldn’t be any opposition to it.”

Hanafin, a rock climbing instructor, talks to Newsroom at his house near the city’s Port Hills. He also believes OMV was acting within common law – but outside the laws of nature.

If citizens blindly obey the law “any atrocity can be perpetrated by a government”.

“I believe it currently is being perpetrated by our Government and most governments of the world,” he says. “Their actions of today are going to devastate and decimate people of the future.”

Hanafin walks through a logical progression – the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels are driving up global carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, and the rate of increase is rising, despite government decisions and climate action.

Atmospheric CO2 hasn’t stabilised, let alone started to decline.

“So far, nothing is working at all, so something has to change; something has to be done.”

Not everyone is in a position to jeopardise their financial security or social perception to take direct action, he says. “But I believe those that can need to do something.”

Fuelled by anger

Fitzjohn says anger at deep-sea drilling drove her to board the CSOL Prospector. The oil and gas companies were “relentless”, she says, arriving and exploring the ocean without the public’s consent.

“And even when Labour brought in a ban of new permits, they didn’t end the old ones.

“So it was just feeling like you’d been fighting something for like 10 years, and just still seeing these companies just use a really dangerous method to explore for oil in the sea.”

Fitzjohn and Hanafin both made it onto environmental activist group Greenpeace’s climb team, honing their skills for more difficult protest actions.

Climbing a rig at sea is a “pretty wild thing to do”, and “hairy”, Fitzjohn says. “But it also felt like a good a chance to give them a big ‘fuck you’, to be honest.”

At the court hearing, the prosecution’s point was: “In a civilised society the law is the law, and citizens cannot choose not to be bound by laws simply because they have strongly held beliefs.”

(Hanafin says MBIE, which prosecuted the pair, also authorised deep-sea oil drilling – “which is surely a highly hazardous activity given the severe environmental consequences that are obviously possible”.)

Fitzjohn says the legal system is better than nothing, but people need to constantly reflect on it and revise the system “in order to match it to the conditions of the Earth that we live in”. “I don’t think we’ve done that.”

In their case the law is wrong, she says, as it supports the climate’s destruction.

“Nature doesn’t care about our laws. The climate doesn’t care about our laws.

“At the moment, what’s happening legally has destroyed ecosystems, and that’s killing people already, in New Zealand, and overseas, and we’re watching the destruction of the systems of life that we rely on.

“So saying the law is the law, that is an incredibly anthropocentric position to have.”

Fitzjohn and Hanafin could have faced up to 12 months in jail, and fines of up to $50,000, for breaking the law.

MBIE’s prosecutor said there was a high degree of planning and premeditation, and while the protest lasted 15 hours the pair had intended to stay longer. There was a “risk of harm”, and a “considerable loss intentionally inflicted on OMV”.

While the court should start its sentencing decision with prison, the prosecutor accepted a community based sentence “would likely meet the purposes and principles of sentencing”.

Judge Lynch said his focus must be on “deterrence, denunciation and accountability”.

Both defendants took responsibility for their actions but demonstrated no remorse.

(Both tell Newsroom they don’t regret the protest. “How could I?” says Fitzjohn. “It was so much fun.”)

The judge noted Hanafin had four previous convictions, between 2017 and 2020, while Fitzjohn was convicted twice, between 2015 and 2017, and was offered diversion in 2019.

“I accept that these convictions do not reflect badly on the defendants’ moral character, but they do show a persistent willingness to break the law,” the Judge said.

“They need to recognise that the consequences will continue to mount if they continue to express their well-intentioned beliefs through unlawful means.”

(It’s not just their beliefs, Hanafin says. “It’s the United Nations and it’s scientists worldwide that are calling for action and calling out governments that continue to follow a fossil fuel agenda.”)

Lynch acknowledged the defendants’ passion and commitment, “however it is how they have gone about it in this case that is wrong”.

“They knew it was wrong when planning it, and in executing it, and said on social media afterwards that they were prepared to face the legal consequences.”

The sentencing won’t make anyone happy, the judge said. The defendants’ legal team suggested the court might find itself on the wrong side of history, while those aggrieved by protest action will think the sentence “far too soft”.

“However, hopefully as I have explained, a sentence must be the least restrictive outcome appropriate in the circumstances and consistent with other similar cases.”

Hanafin says the Crown Minerals Act, amended by the government in 2013, had clearly been broken. Where the court had discretion was in the sentencing, and whether to order reparation be paid.

“And I think that was unjust in the current context of the world we live in.”

Fitzjohn, meanwhile, says the court was trying to balance two individuals against a huge corporation.

“So the scales are so unequal to begin with,” she says. “I do think [the sentence] sends the wrong message. It is penalising people for standing up to a company that is so much better resourced.”

Asked for comment, OMV NZ general manager Henrik Mosser says: “OMV respects the right for peaceful protest as long as it is done so in a safe manner.”

OMV, through its New Zealand subsidiary, owns Māui, one of New Zealand’s largest gas fields, has a 69 percent share in Maari, the country’s biggest oil field, and a 74 percent stake in the Pohokura gas field. All are off the Taranaki coast.

The company, which employs 280 people, supplies about half of New Zealand’s gas, with its biggest customer being methanol producer Methanex.

The Austrian parent company recorded sales of €39 billion ($NZ70.5b) in 2023.

That year, OMV’s Australia and New Zealand operations made operating profits of €60m ($NZ108m), down from €237m the previous year. It paid €91m ($NZ164m) in taxes, royalties and fees in New Zealand.

OMV wants to sell its New Zealand assets. In January, the company said it had agreed to divest its 50 percent stake in a Malaysian joint venture company, with exploration interests in New Zealand, to French multinational company TotalEnergies.

“The sales process for 100 percent of the shares in OMV New Zealand Limited is continuing.” 

Bruce Parkes is the general manager of resources markets for the Business Ministry, which regulates petroleum and minerals resources. He tells Newsroom: “We have a responsibility to ensure that all participants in and associated with the sector can carry out their lawful activities without interference and in a safe environment.”

It took longer than expected to lay charges against Hanafin and Fitzjohn because of Covid-19 disruptions, Parkes says, and discussions about which agency would lay the charges.

“While we respect the right to protest, that must be done lawfully and without protesters placing themselves or others in danger. These types of illegal actions can be incredibly dangerous for the protesters, the drill rig crew, and for emergency responders.”

In 2020, New Zealand First MP Shane Jones, who was regional economic devleopment minister, called Hanafin and Fitzjohn “eco-evangelists”.

Now the Resources Minister and Associate Minister of Energy, Jones’ office says he believes section 101(b) of the Crown Minerals Act “is fit for purpose and has no plans at this stage to re-visit it”. “He has asked for no advice and has received none.”

“I think what you’ll find is that people are becoming increasingly concerned about the climate crisis, and that is going to motivate them to take direction action.”

Russel Norman, Greenpeace Aotearoa

The Government has sparked protests this year because of its stance on the Treaty of Waitangi, and courted controversy with its fast-tracked consenting bill, and by repealing smokefree laws.

Newly minted Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick believes the plan to overturn a ban on offshore oil and gas will be a flashpoint for public activism.

Hanafin, for one, says: “More protest is a definite.”

Greenpeace Aotearoa’s executive director Russel Norman has a unique perspective on the so-called Anadarko amendment.

He and fellow activist Sara Howell were in the first group of people charged under the Act for swimming in front of the world’s largest oil and gas exploration ship, the Amazon Warrior, in 2017. (They were discharged without conviction the following year.)

Norman says peaceful civil disobedience and non-violent direct action were key to achieving milestones in this country, such as women getting the vote, our nuclear-free stance, and the anti-apartheid movement.

“We still strongly believe that that’s a core part of living in a democracy, is people’s right to take peaceful civil disobedience and we certainly reserve the right to do that.”

Does he think the court sentencing of Hanafin and Fitzjohn will deter climate activists?

“I think what you’ll find is that people are becoming increasingly concerned about the climate crisis, and that is going to motivate them to take direction action.

“That’s going to be the key driver of this thing, not so much whatever particular penalties may have been imposed in this case.”

Norman says his case demonstrated the courts can defend the right to take climate protest – that judges can sympathise with people who act peacefully and in good faith, and understand the value of civil disobedience to achieve the greater aims of society.

James Cockle, of Dunedin, is a spokesperson for Climate Liberation Aotearoa, which is campaigning to have emissions from international shipping and aviation included in the country’s emission reduction targets.

He says Fitzjohn and Hanafin shouldn’t have been in court. Big oil companies have spent decades in denial, trying to defer the problem, and the case was another example of the industry’s power, he says.

(In March 2020, John Carnegie said the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand supported a transition to lower emissions but protesters boarding an oil rig “doesn’t help at all”. OMV’s latest annual report says the company aims to become a net-zero emission company by 2050.)

Cockle says the court sentencing won’t deter climate action.

“If anything, the opposite would be the case. I think that’ll inspire a lot more people to take action.

“Many of us remember the iconic images of that pair up on that oil rig, and were really inspired by what they did. I’m hoping, if anything, this will spread that story further.”

He adds: “We’re intending to continue to take disruptive action.”

Newsroom asks Fitzjohn and Hanafin if their protest changed anything, and whether it was worth it.

“No, I don’t think it changed anything, in terms of the laws,” Fitzjohn says. “But it did communicate something … to the oil companies, to Government, and to the public.

“When you’re willing to go to those kinds of lengths to communicate something I think it does go into the public consciousness. And I think that that was important.”

Hanafin says the protest showed oil companies and the government “Aotearoa’s not just going to sit and watch anyone come and plunder their oceans at the expense of the environment”.

“Although this action may not have cost them much, or stopped anything in particular from happening, [OMV] knows that that’s a PR risk for them back home in Austria. And they know that that’s a financial risk that they’ve got to build into their future activities.”

Will the pair take potentially illegal action again?

Fitzjohn doesn’t rule it out.

“If there was something that felt like it was so important for me to do that I wouldn’t be able to be at ease if I didn’t do it, and that happened to coincide with something that might lead to a jail term, then I think that would be a conversation that I’d have with myself.”

Hanafin pauses, and drums his fingers on the couch. He doesn’t answer the question directly.

“Taking action on a cause that you believe incredibly strongly about, and on behalf of life on earth and the wellbeing of humanity in the future, is incredibly humbling, but it’s also incredibly liberating.

“We spend a lot of time talking about these kinds of problems, but that generally doesn’t make people feel better about the issues. Actually doing something does.”