“New Zealand desperately needs more gas and TAG believes there is already about 500 billion cubic feet of gas in onshore Taranaki that we can unlock in the next two years or so, to buy us some time while explorers hunt for the mega trillion cubic feet finds most likely to be found offshore,” TAG president Drew Cadenhead told EnergyReview.net this morning.

He said several onshore Taranaki deep-gas fields had yet to perform to their full potential. These included Bridge Petroleum’s Radnor and Austral Pacific Energy’s Cardiff discoveries, and perhaps Todd Energy’s established Mangahewa field.

Coordinating drilling programs and sharing non-commercially sensitive technical information should improve the fields’ petroleum production flows, as well as speeding up the commercialisation of recent discoveries, according to Cadenhead.

“I believe this offers a unique opportunity for everybody to get together to solve the deep gas problem we seem to have in New Zealand,” he said.

TAG had recently suggested explorers work together to bring deep onshore Taranaki gas to market and Crown Minerals is convening a meeting next month to test support for a combined onshore drilling and research program.

Austral chief executive Rick Webber told ERN he agreed that if companies could put together a program for drilling six to eight wells, it would give the critical mass needed for explorers to gain the attention of rig operators and service companies.

“If we can start an active, ongoing deep gas exploration program that gains momentum, then great,” Webber said.

Swift Energy New Zealand president Alan Cunningham told ERN that his company would participate in any Crown Minerals-organised workshop on deep gas opportunities.

Todd Energy managing director Richard Tweedie said his company, New Zealand’s largest domestic oil and gas producer, would be interested in participating in the TAG proposal but warned that gas prices might need to increase to cover the costs of extracting deep gas.

New Zealand uses about 160 bcf of gas a year and demand may start to exceed supply within a few years, despite first gas from the Taranaki near-shore Pohokura project later this year.

Contact Energy’s planned 300MW Otahuhu-C gas-fired power station in Auckland has been on hold for several years due to uncertain future gas supplies, while Methanex New Zealand’s sole remaining methanol plant at the Waitara Valley may shut down again after its latest gas entitlement runs out next month.