The Ministry of Economic Development unit late last year first closed all of offshore Northland and then offshore East Cape, and was progressively closing parts of onshore Taranaki as industry players surrendered permits.
Its latest step has been to close much of the North Island’s southern east coast – from northern Wairarapa down to the tip of Marlborough in the South Island – another region where players have recently relinquished permits.
Crown Minerals group manager Adam Feeley says this latest exclusion of acreage from PITs is an interim measure before assessing the area’s suitability for a blocks offer.
Similarly, Crown Minerals anticipates blocks offers in offshore Northland and onshore Taranaki, though the timing is not certain.
“East Cape is reserved as we are undertaking seismic acquisition there this summer,” Feeley told PetroleumNews.net. The CGG Veritas Duke seismic vessel is acquiring 2300km of 2D data over the unpermitted and largely unsurveyed Raukumara Basin north of East Cape.
Currently Crown Minerals’ sole official blocks offer is for the Great South Basin. The offer opened last August and closes at the end of March.
Feeley said Crown Minerals was withholding acreage from PIT applications because it preferred to encourage exploration “in an orderly” way with the acreage being assessed first, pre-competitive data being acquired if necessary, and proper promotion of the blocks in question.
“A free-for-all may satisfy the wishes of some companies, but we consider an orderly allocation process involving high quality exploration programs to be in the Crown’s best interest,” he said.
“Moreover, we anticipate that if there is high interest in the GSB, there may be successful and unsuccessful parties who will be seeking additional acreage after that blocks offer.”
Players to have snapped up vacant offshore Taranaki acreage recently by using PIT applications, where applications can be made at any time, have included Tui Area project operator Australian Worldwide Exploration and Maari oil field operator Austrian firm OMV. Others have included the Maui partners, Shell Todd Energy and OMV, and New Zealand integrated energy player, Genesis Energy.
Feeley dispelled rumours that Crown Minerals would be showcasing all this vacant acreage at the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association’s 2007 conference in Adelaide during April.
“Unfortunately APPEA’s 2007 conference does not coincide with where our work is at. The GSB blocks offer will be closed and under assessment, while the East Coast will still be having data acquired,” he said.
