While remaining adamant that the current depressed market would not last much longer precisely because there is "little or no investment in sustaining and replacing" oil production, Emmett said: "We do always at this time in the cycle keep a weather eye out for opportunities, and I don't rule out that there will be a long-dated, low-cost opportunity with some upside that might be a good acquisition for us."

Add Horizon's declaration in its half-year FY2015 financial results last month that it was "monitoring brownfield LNG development opportunities in the region", and suddenly figuring out where Horizon sees its future is not rocket science.

The company is eyeing these opportunities even while it conducts a feasibility study for a Western Province-based greenfield midscale LNG project in partnership with Osaka Gas.

That said, Horizon believes its oil production from multiple fields - one in NZ and two in China - reduces production risk for the company, but said "gas sales will reduce the company's reliance on the oil price in the longer-term".

The priority in the short term is to keep capex low this year and next while optimising production from existing fields, including getting reductions from suppliers in its operating expense.

A big part of its focus this year, Emmett said, is its undeveloped reserves and resources.

"We will be exerting a lot of effort in moving those projects forward in terms of planning so we can take advantage of the cost deflation that we're seeing in capital costs," he said.

This year Horizon will complete the drilling campaign on its Maari growth project using the Ensco107 jack-up rig to access undeveloped reserves and modify existing facilities to increase Maari production from current levels offshore New Zealand.

While Emmett described the Maari development growth project drilling as "challenging", he said he was confident Horizon would be successful with it and that it would increase gross production from the field from a current rate of about 8000bpd to 15,000bpd later this year.

Horizon also plans to optimise oil production at the Beibu Gulf fields offshore China, including undeveloped reserves in the WZ 12-10-1 prospects, which have a preliminary estimate of about 10MMbbl; while also progressing the Beibu Gulf fields Phase II development plan for the WZ 12-8E field.

Emmett said the CNOOC-operated Beibu Gulf project has so far produced about 7MMbbl of oil since it came online in March 2013.

"We've [the JV with operator CNOOC, Roc/Fosun and Korean entity Majuko] sold over $700 million of oil, the field costs us about $350 million to develop, so it's been a very good asset for us," he said.

"There are 20MMbbl of certified reserves left in the developed part of the field, there are another 20 million barrels remaining undeveloped in the block, so we're focused on development planning for those reserves."

He said two recent developments had affected Horizon's prospects for LNG commercialisation in PNG.

The first was that Exxon subsidiary Esso PNG, operator of the P'nyang field to the north of Horizon's fields, had been given a deadline of 2017 to come up with its financial investment decision on that field.

"We're very pleased to see that deadline, as we believe there's a good chance that the development concept of P'nyang will involve the aggregation of our fields in what will be expansion train three to the existing LNG project," Emmett said.

"The second factor is ExxonMobil and Oil Search have recently not been able to gain access together in the Elk Antelope project, which I would see as being more expansion train potential, and so now I think the focus will be more on P'nyang and our fields in the Western Province."

As for the "very severe" oil market downturn witnessed by industry since the middle of 2014, Emmett is not overly phased, saying veterans like himself have seen it all before.

"We all remember the down parts of the cycle of 1985-86, 1998, 2008, 2009, and we're in another one of those," he said.

"I'm confident that prices will recover, I don't think the downturn will be for a particularly long time, and I'm confident because of the quite considerable depletion that's going on in the global oil supply at the moment.

"With oil prices where they are, there is very little or no investment in sustaining and replacing that production. So I don't think it's going to take long for oil prices to be brought under balance."

Horizon is well protected with about 75% of its oil production hedged at prices over $95/bbl. That runs off to about 50% cover by the end of this year, and 50% for the first half of 2016.

He added that Horizon and its partners have reduced their capital expenditure "quite significantly".

"So with a combination of our income being protected by hedging and reduced capex, we will actually be in quite a strong position in terms of liquidity going into 2016," he said.

"We do have obligations in 2016, which is to repay our convertible bonds, but perversely the low oil price and the deferring of capex will enable us to do that.

"Horizon Oil's long term strategy has always been to be an E&P leader in the Asia Pacific area.

"We have a large resource and reserves base only about 12% of which is developed. So if we are going to become a much larger company, our focus has got to be on bringing those undeveloped reserves and resources into the reserves and developed category.

"That's where are attention is focused in the medium to long term, and we believe that if we are successful in doing that our shareholders will be rewarded by the valuations being put on reserves."