However, doubts remain whether majority stakeholder Greymouth Petroleum will accept the report by British firm Troy Ikoda Limited or continue to veto such activity. EnergyReview.Net could not contact Greymouth principals Mark Dunphy or John Sturgess for comment today.

NZOG last night said it had received the Troy Ikoda report, commissioned after the Ngatoro partners; NZOG, Greymouth and Indo-Pacific Energy, were unable to agree on the most effective means of increasing production from the field.

The report recommends an aggressive water injection program to restore pressures in the main Ngatoro reservoir and "sweep" an extra 2.4 million barrels of oil from the field, which would be additional to existing reserves.

Company secretary Brian Roulston said NZOG supported the Troy Ikoda recommendations and was encouraging the Ngatoro joint venture to immediately implement the necessary work.

The first step in the recommended program is re-injection of water at the rate of 4000-6000 barrels per day via an existing well. Once that process is under way, the second component is to drill a special purpose well to increase total water injection to 10,000 barrels per day.

The additional reserves and production achievable from implementing the Troy Ikoda recommendations is assessed at 2.4 million barrels, compared to currently booked reserves of 0.8 million barrels.

NZOG's 35% share of Ngatoro field reserves would, through a successful waterflood, jump from approximately 250,000 barrels to 1.1 million barrels of oil.

Earlier this month Indo-Pacific, which holds a 5% stake in Ngatoro through its Ngatoro Energy Ltd subsidiary, said testing of the Tabla-1 well, drilled last December within the Ngatoro mining licence PMP 38148, and the Ngatoro-A waterflood remained on hold due to Greymouth's continuing veto of such activity.