Will the oil and gas ban reversal bring much-needed international investment , or just stymy efforts to combat climate change?

Oil and gas exploration is coming back. Will it save the sector, destroy the environment - or make no difference at all?

The government's planned reversal of the oil and gas exploration ban has been unsurprisingly divisive, being applauded by some and harshly criticised by others.

But Newsroom's Marc Daalder says in reality, it may make no tangible difference.

"It's possible that the government repeals the ban and new developers don't come in because they look at New Zealand and they say 'well actually half the parties in parliament want to ban us from doing this, so if there's an election and those parties win we're back to square one, so should we be investing a significant amount of capital?"

In today's episode of The Detail, we look at how New Zealand got to the 2018 ban in the first place, the current state of the oil and gas sector, and the impact the changes could have.

John Carnegie, Chief Executive of Energy Resources Aotearoa, says that oil and gas accounts for about half of New Zealand's primary energy. Currently, all oil and gas fields in New Zealand are in Taranaki, or just off its coast. But Carnegie says there are several areas around New Zealand where the industry believes there are oil and gas resources, but they aren't allowed to explore due to the 2018 ban.

"There were permits that were held off the coast in Great South Basin, off the coast of the South Island, off the coast of the East Coast of the North Island but progressively, all of those permits have been handed back because obviously with the ban, the market conditions changed:"

He says because the ban was a "massive change" and "unexpected", it became harder for oil and gas companies to invest in New Zealand.

Daalder questions that logic.

"The reality is the fossil fuel sector and fossil fuel companies globally can see the writing on the wall: we don't need fossil fuels anymore. If not this year, then next year or maybe the year after will be the period where global fossil fuel demand for things like electricity starts to peak," he says.

"The International Energy Agency, which is not a hugely ambitious organisation on climate, in 2021, published a scenario for how to reach net zero energy systems and how to do that in a way that limits warming to 1.5 degrees , which is the global goal, but also the goal that's in our Zero Carbon Act that the government has to achieve. It found that the pathway doesn't involve any new oil and gas fields. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details