The Vancouver-headquartered company said it planned to investigate the commercialisation of two features in the northern permit licence, PEP 38348.
The Waitangi-1 well, drilled in 1912, continued to produce high-quality oil from a sandstone reservoir at a depth of about 212m, said Trans-Orient.
The company did not specify how much oil had been produced in recent years, but it did say it planned to survey the well's productive capacity, acquire a detailed seismic survey around the wellsite, re-drill at the location, and lift oil using beam pump technology.
Further north at Te Puia Springs, for many years shallow bores collected gas, with associated oil, used for heating purposes at the nearby Te Puia Hospital.
These bores have continued to flow gas, though the hospital had not used the gas for several decades due to concerns about hydrogen sulphide, Trans-Orient executive chairman Dave Bennett told PetroleumNews.net from Wellington today.
Trans-Orient would conduct flow rate tests on these old boreholes to better assess the commercial potential for both electricity generation and oil recovery.
"Given positive results at either of these projects, we can rapidly and cost-effectively proceed to profitable development," said Bennett.
"Interestingly, these long-lived oil and gas seeps also demonstrate the production potential of the underlying Waipawa-Whangai fractured shales, which immediately underlie these primitive wells."
Bennett said Trans-Orient's planned program with these unconventional plays was moving forward with positive results.
International oil services company Core Laboratories had recently analysed a number of core plugs from samples of the Waipawa and Whangai shales and found them to be high-quality oil and gas source rocks and also 'unconventional' fractured shale reservoir units.
The measured primary porosities were in the 22%-30% range, substantially exceeding those typically measured in North American fractured plays such as the Barnett and Bakken shales.
"We are encouraged to see such high porosities, with measured permeabilities in the range of other successful fractured shale plays, and these positive results can only enhance our ability to successfully and economically produce oil and or gas from this major unconventional resource."
Bennett also said Trans-Orient was next month acquiring about 50km of seismic within the main Waipawa-Whangai shale fairway, and on other conventional exploration targets.
The $US1.4 million program would be managed by UK-based RPS Energy to identify optimal drilling locations over Trans-Orient's defined prospects, including Boar Hill, Pauariki and Kowhai, and to detail the Mangaorapa, Arakihi, Kawakawa, Gala and Waipuka structures, several of the more prominent follow-on drilling targets.
Geochemical sampling over the past year had also revealed elevated levels of hydrocarbons at ground surface over certain of these features, which were of various ages -- Miocene, Paleocene or older.
"The seismic data collected will immediately be processed, leading up to a multi-well exploration drilling campaign. This initial drilling will target a number of potential sandstone reservoirs at depths of about 1500m or less, as well as fractured shale targets."
Bennett told PNN that exploration drilling could start as early as April, given the availability of a suitable rig.
Late last year independent consultant Sproule International said its mid-case estimate of in-place undiscovered resource potential over Trans-Orient's New Zealand permits was 1.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent based on defined prospects and leads in PEP 38348 and 38349.
PEP 38348 covers 2147 square kilometres of land in northern Poverty Bay, while PEP 38349 covers 6600sq.km of land in southern Hawkes Bay.
