Flicked over to The Standard this morning and this appeared in the header.
Sort of sick, isn’t it?
Greenpeace is of course making the point that we should ban offshore drilling.
Apparently abusing the corpse of a penguin who died in oil from the results of an incompetent ship’s crew demonstrates that we should ignore the fact that there are thousands of offshore oil platforms, only one of which has caused a major spill in recent years.
But while I’m on the topic, there’s a couple of points about the Rena which have been refuted by time itself.
1. The salvage was delayed, and those delays meant that oil was allowed to leak.
We now know that getting oil from the Rena was always going to be a very long and technically difficult task. So the chances of getting enough off within the first few days to prevent leakage was always zero.
In fact from early on salvage experts marveled at how quick the response was.
2. The boat was badly maintained
The boat has not broken up, even now. That is a pretty good sign it was not a rustbucket riddled with holes.
It seems that the major issue with it was that the maps of the south china sea were out of date.
Something should go here, maybe later. 
It seems that the major issue with it was that the maps of the south china sea were out of date.
The Astrolabe reef was named after the ship Astrolabe which nearly grounded there in 1827. These must be very out-of-date maps.
You can have the best, most detailed maps in the world and still hit a well marked reef if the guy behind the wheel isn’t paying attention.