It is understood new player Greymouth Petroleum - which purchased Shell New Zealand's 59.57% stake in the Ngatoro mining licence PMP 38148 earlier this year - has a different exploration strategy to that of minor (5%) stakeholder Indo-Pacific Energy and is using its majority shareholding to veto Indo-Pacific's preferred development options.

Last week Indo-Pacific said the Goldie-1 well - drilled within the permit last year by Indo-Pacific on a sole-risk basis - was shut-in. The well was closed, despite there being no technical reason for doing so, but re-opened for on-going production earlier this week.

Industry commentators are rather bemused by this and say internal wrangles about the legal definitions of "sole-risk" and the necessity for flaring are behind the temporary closures and delays.

Indo-Pacific had planned to drill the Goldie-2 well next month but that has now been put on hold. Indo-Pacific had also planned to drill the Tabla-1 well into a separate small oil prospect within the Ngatoro licence around the same time, but that may also be postponed.

Indo-Pacific has declined to comment on the discord, other than to issue a statement saying Dunphy and Sturgess were claiming they were entitled to a greater equity in the Goldie project and that there were likely to be other matters which Greymouth also sought resolution about.

Indo-Pacific chief executive Dave Bennett has declined to elaborate on the matter, as has Sturgess, except to say that Greymouth does not support any unnecessary flaring.

Greymouth is probably claiming it is entitled to a percentage of NZOG's share at no extra cost, while Indo-Pacific maintains Greymouth's original purchase of the Shell share of PMP 38148 was just that and covered Shell's buy-back into Goldie and nothing else.

Indo-Pacific says Greymouth will have to make additional cash payments, based on future oil prices, reservoir performance and other operational factors, to ever take a greater slice of the Goldie pie.

Last year Shell NZ exercised its right to buy back into the Goldie pool for an unspecified premium, while fellow Ngatoro partner New Zealand Oil and Gas declined to do so.

The dispute is of great importance to Indo-Pacific as it is basing its future onshore Taranaki exploration strategy on Goldie, which has now produced over 170,000 barrels since early last year, plus the optimisation of production for the whole Ngatoro mining licence, including Tabla.

Both the Goldie and Tabla prospects are small and are each likely to contain about two million barrels or so of oil. However, they should prove very economic to develop as they are close to the Kaimiro production facilities and associated pipelines, as well as being less than 50km from Port Taranaki and its petroleum exporting facilities.