Today the company has been advised by the Minister of Conservation it has approved in principle an application for an access arrangement from Pike River Coal Company to mine the coal deposits in the Pike River Catchment on the country's West Coast.

Pike River Coal Company is 72% owned by New Zealand Oil & Gas.

However, the approval is subject to the company and the Department of Conservation (DOC) reaching a satisfactory agreement on the terms and conditions of the company's access arrangement to the area, including financial assurances and bonds.

The Pike River Coal company is proposing an underground mine that will extract between 600,000 and a million tons of coal annually for an estimated twenty years. The mine will require an access road over 3.6 km of public conservation land and the mine itself is located under conservation land on the eastern slopes of the Paparoa range in the Grey Valley, north east of Greymouth.