Beyond The Cook Strait Cable

Press, Volume C, Issue 29669, 13 November 1961, Page 12

Beyond The Cook Strait Cable

As the Minister of Electricity told the House oi Representatives on Thursday, it would be wrong for the Government to count on Taranaki gas making the Cook Strait power cable unnecessary. It would be as wrong, indeed, as it was for the previous Government to count so heavily on geothermal power from Wairakei. That decision has risked a power shortage in the North Island; should the Kapuni gas strike not come up to expectations or its exploitation prove abnormally difficult, any further delay on the cable might make the shortage a crippling one. Nevertheless it is clear that the Government would have been 1” , a better position to choose the course of wis-

dom if it—or its predecessors—had made in good time the comprehensive survey of New Zealand’s power resources and needs that is so obviously and urgently needed. The addition of a new source of power to those on which we have hitherto relied makes it all the more important that there should be a competent planning authority to secure the most economical use of all our indigenous fuels. There is a feeling that the Government’s advisers would have come down on the side of electricity if the contest between Benmore and Kapuni had been far less clear-cut than it is—simply because New Zealand has not yet become accustomed to thinking of power problems in anything other than electrical terms.