It will contribute $NZ3.6 million a year for six years to its own science company, Geological and Nuclear Sciences Ltd (formerly IGNS), to further identify the petroleum potential of various regions, with the aim of attracting new exploration companies to New Zealand.
Research program leader Peter King says this new program is aimed at developing a four-dimensional computer model of the prospective parts of New Zealand's sedimentary basins.
"As well as geographic location, it will show thickness and depth of burial of rock strata likely to contain oil and gas, and how factors affecting the evolution of petroleum accumulations have changed through geological time. The work will provide a wealth of new data that will lead to improved prediction of the presence and type of petroleum accumulations."
New discoveries should be only a matter of time, he believed, because New Zealand remained relatively unexplored and the geological prerequisites for petroleum were widely present.
Although the Taranaki Basin was New Zealand's best understood sedimentary basin, it still remained only lightly explored in global terms. There remained a strong focus on this basin, which was one of the world's best examples of a coal-sourced oil and gas region.
"As GNS develops increasingly sophisticated techniques and interpretations in Taranaki, this knowledge will be used for detailed evaluation in other regions.
"Based on known field sizes and geological assessments, we believe that considerable volumes of oil and gas have yet to be discovered in Taranaki," said King.
Methanex Asia-Pacific vice-president Bruce Aitken recently told EnergyReview.Net that he believed a 1tcf-plus gas field was still to be found off Taranaki.
King said the new research program contained a mix of fundamental geological knowledge, big-picture regional evaluations, computer-based modelling, and solutions-based research attuned to industry needs. The research would add value to industry data and would be of a type not normally undertaken by exploration companies.
"We'll work closely with exploration companies to identify special areas where our research efforts can be focused."
He said the New Zealand exploration sector was currently struggling to build the critical mass needed to ensure discovery of new reserves sufficient to offset the economic and social disruption that would be caused by the looming demise of the Maui gas field.
There would also be a focus on two new offshore frontier regions, to the northwest and southeast of New Zealand, and GNS would encourage the collection of new seismic data over other potential reserves in the licence areas of Regina, Canterbury-Bounty, and East Coast.
It would also try to assess how much frozen natural gas hydrates lay on the deep ocean bed, a globally-recognised potential energy source which nobody had yet worked out how to exploit.
