The Ministry of Economic Development Crown Minerals unit has awarded Grande the 11,810 square kilometre block the company applied for last May.

Initial work program commitments for the licence PEP 38527 – largely offshore but with a thin onshore coastal strip – include reprocessing a minimum of 465km of 2D seismic, acquiring 400sq.km of aerial geophysical data, and acquiring at least 525km of new 2D in the first two years.

Later commitments include shooting 3D seismic before committing to drill an exploration well within four years.

The Grande permit is essentially the same acreage that United States firm Thomasson International Ventures and Shell Exploration New Zealand held earlier this decade.

Grande Energy president Bob Gaudin told PetroleumNews.net last May that the recommendation of a consulting geologist, former Thomasson vice-president Ed Berg, was one reason Grande Energy had applied for its first venture in New Zealand.

Thomasson believed this part of the West Coast could be prospective for oil and gas, as the region had geological similarities to Taranaki and Australia's Gippsland Basin, albeit on a smaller scale.

Shell New Zealand paid for the Multiwave Geophysical Company of Norway to acquire a reconnaissance seismic in the largely unexplored region to the north of and offshore from Haast.

But Shell later said it was not convinced of the presence of Cretaceous grabens with source rock potential, including Oligocene shales, within the area and declined to take any equity in the permit.

Denver-based Thomasson then relinquished the licence after reprocessing of Shell's seismic data failed to detect hydrocarbons in shallower sections, including Miocene-aged turbidite sands.