Crown Resources manager Adam Feeley this morning announced the successful conclusion of negotiations for Norway’s Multiwave company to shoot seismic over approximately 100,000 square kilometres of ocean from the Wairarapa coast up to the eastern Bay of Plenty.
“This is a ground-breaking initiative which will have a major impact on perceptions of New Zealand as a desirable petroleum exploration destination by international exploration companies,” Feeley said.
Feeley told EnergyReview.Net that the survey should start before end of the month. If data acquisition and industry response was good enough then another survey elsewhere around the country could be done next year.
“This survey should attract enough industry interest to justify this becoming a permanent feature of the kiwi exploration scene,” he told ERN from Auckland.
The east coast survey was the first to be undertaken under the NZ$15M budget approved by Cabinet last September as part of the Crown’s investment strategy to promote international exploration in New Zealand’s frontier petroleum basins.
The project represented a significant shift in strategies to secure oil and gas supplies post-Maui as the data acquired would be processed, packaged and made freely available to companies bidding for exploration permits in the region.
“Frontier basins such as the East Coast and Northland are critical to increasing New Zealand’s petroleum reserves and reducing our dependency on the Taranaki basin, and Maui in particular,” Feeley said.
The lack of modern seismic data was the single biggest barrier to attracting new explorers to New Zealand, he said.
“There is no modern industry-standard marine seismic data north of Hawkes Bay," Feeley said.
"Commissioning this single survey will be a major step towards understanding the structural complexities of this area. And making the data freely available will significantly reduce the time and costs associated with a company evaluating prospectivity and preparing a bid for an exploration permit.”
The tendering process for these new East Coast permits would open in mid-2005 and close by the end of the year, which would coincide with block offers for Northland and other basins.
“New Zealand cannot afford to put all its eggs in one basket with petroleum exploration, and so the fund will be spread its investment across a range of basins with more surveys being planned over the next two years,” Feeley said.
Recent meetings with large North American exploration companies had reinforced the view that they were interested in exploring New Zealand because of the attractive fiscal regime, the range of frontier basins on offer, and the security it offered over traditional African and Middle Eastern destinations, he told ERN.
