The Shell-owned Omata Tank Farm near Port Taranaki, New Plymouth, is virtually the only way to store and then export petroleum products through the port.

Last May, Greymouth chief operating officer John Sturgess said Shell New Zealand was claiming Greymouth had no ongoing rights to store crude from its nearby Moturoa-5 and 6 wells at Omata.

Dunphy said it should be easy to put more storage on the tank farm and Greymouth had planned to do that, but Shell had declined its offer.

“We need independent operations,” he said, adding it was unclear what the next best step was to resolve the issue.

Origin Energy Kupe project director Peter Ashford also told the conference that issues regarding the storage of condensate from that offshore Taranaki field were not yet resolved.

He said it was likely that Origin, as operator of the $NZ1080 million (about $A920 million) project, would want to build tanks and export facilities at Omata for first field flows from mid-2009.

Current plans were to truck condensate by road tanker for export, but a pipeline could also be constructed from the onshore production station near Hawera to the port.