"Following expiry of an agreement to share certain staff and facilities with Pan Pacific Petroleum NL, which is no longer a subsidiary, NZOG has decided to re-establish its offices in Wellington. All operations are to be centred in Wellington by mid-2004," says presently Sydney-headquartered NZOG in its quarterly report to December.

EnergyReview.Net last week said NZOG was contemplating a trans Tasman shift, though exploration manager Eric Matthews declined to comment. Today, however, he was more forthcoming.

"It's pretty clear we expect to be very busy in the next few years, we have some significant projects, Kupe, west Maui, and Pike (South Island coal)," he told ERN from Sydney.

It was too early to say whether NZOG would keep its small Auckland office open. It was also too early to say which staff would cross the Tasman. It was likely finance manager Gordon Ward would shift, though Matthews did not yet know what he would do.

NZOG used to reside in the NZ capital until a 1994 reorganisation saw it shift to Sydney.

The NZOG report said preparations were well advanced for the multi-well PEP 38460 program NZOG and Pan Pacific would participate in this autumn. Ocean floor surveys had been completed over several different locations, to allow flexibility as to drilling locations after the first two firm wells had been evaluated, and the Ocean Bounty rig was scheduled to be on location by late March.

The first well would be Amokura-1, to ascertain whether the Amokura prospect contained enough recoverable oil to support a joint development with last year's nearby Tui find, some 4km away. Next would be Pukeko-1, which had the Eocene-aged Kapuni C, D and F sands as main targets, with the C sands having the potential to contain up to 80 million barrels of oil.

The results of the first two wells would determine whether a third well should follow immediately.

Contiguous with PEP38460 was Taranaki's first deepwater block PEP 38483, which was awarded last December to operator AWE, NZOG and Pan Pacific.

Matthews told ERN that the offshore Mangatoa structure, which covered over 100 sqkm in licence PEP38483, had the potential to be a very large gas-prone prospect. Any well would be drilled from onshore and deviated out into the structure. Mangatoa's northern flank was intersected by the Te Ranga-1 well in 1986, which appeared to have encountered a gas column about 140m thick.

Matthews confirmed NZOG had bid for some of the recent onshore/near shore Taranaki blocks offer, the results of which are expected any day.

He also confirmed the out-of-court settlement of some unspecified matters with Ngatoro partner Greymouth Petroleum. These matters had been resolved to NZOG's satisfaction, though means of resolving other differences with Greymouth continued to be pursued.

The Ngatoro field, onshore Taranaki mining licence PMP38148, produced only 2947 barrels for NZOG during the December quarter, compared to 12,300 in the preceding quarter, as the Ngatoro A wellsite had been shut in from October 15 to January 17.

NZOG was continuing negotiations for the sale of its share of Kupe gas reserves, while Genesis Power and Origin Energy were reported to be in the final stages of Origin acquiring a 50% stake in the offshore Taranaki field Kupe and taking over as operator.