Greenpeace have lost their bid to stop oil giant Anadarko from drilling off the coast of New Zealand.
The environmental lobby group wanted a judicial review of the decision to let the company drill for oil but the Wellington High Court dismissed the application on Thursday.
Anadarko had not provided an adequate impact assessment to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) and as a result their application to drill should not have been approved, Greenpeace said.
Anadarko's impact assessment was 150 pages with a 73-page appendix - but Greenpeace said the company's failure to attach the full annexes meant the assessment was incomplete.
Greenpeace said Anadarko only dealt with the possibility a spill could go beyond the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf in one of the annexes, which was not submitted.
But Justice Alan MacKenzie said the EPA, who gave Anadarko a permit to explore for oil off the Raglan coast and in the Canterbury Basin, was correct to accept the impact assessment.
Justice MacKenzie said the EPA's role was administrative and it didn't have to assess the merits of the content of the impact statement.
"The information as to the measures to be taken to avoid remedy or mitigate the adverse effects identified was sufficient, and EPA did not need to see the annexes," he said in his judgment.
"It would be a triumph of form over substance to direct that the impact assessment be resubmitted."
He dismissed Greenpeace's application for judicial review. In a statement, Greenpeace hit out at the outcome, saying it made a mockery of NZ Energy and Resources Minister Simon Bridges' claim the industry had been "put through the wringer".
"The judge has confirmed our worst fears that the law is so weak that the government's lead environment agency could let Anadarko start deep water drilling without looking at key documents like its oil spill modelling," Greenpeace's chief policy adviser Nathan Argent said.
"The government's oil-drilling program is a farce."
The EPA said in a statement it was pleased with the findings.
