The Vancouver-headquartered company has applied to Crown Minerals for onshore licence PEP 50940 covering an area of 453.3 square kilometres surrounding the city of Gisborne to the north.

"There are several leads in the acreage we are interested in, and it fits in well with our program in the adjacent permit (PEP 38348)," chairman Dave Bennett told PetroleumNews.net from Wellington.

Previous wells in the acreage applied for included the Waitaria wells that operator Westech Energy drilled in association with partner Indo-Pacific Energy (now Austral Pacific Energy) in the 1990s.

Waitaria-1 was drilled near Gisborne in early 1996 and was deepened without success in 1997. Bennett said there were plenty of gas shows but no reservoir.

Meanwhile, Bennett said the timing of the company's planned drilling campaign had slipped with drilling not likely to start until the first, or perhaps second, quarter of next year.

Earlier this year Bennett told PNN Trans-Orient was firming up possible drill sites in PEP 38348 and the more southern licence PEP 38349, following the successful completion of two small seismic surveys, totalling 55km of 2D data, over prospective parts of the permits.

He said then that some seismic had covered the Waipawa-Whangai shale fairway, while part covered more conventional exploration targets, as a prelude to drilling at least one exploration well in each licence in late 2008.

Initial drilling would target several potential sandstone reservoirs at depths of about 1500m or less, as well as fractured shale targets.

In late 2006, 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 2147sq.km in northern Poverty Bay, while PEP 38349 covers 6600sq.km in southern Hawkes Bay.