The dust had barely settled after the companies' 2½ week High Court battle for control of the contentious Goldie oil field, when Greymouth announced its development plans for the next few months. This includes linking the very subject of their dispute, the Goldie-1 well, into Greymouth's nearby Kaimiro production station, and drilling a sidetrack of the Tabla-1 well as well as a Ngatoro development well.
Considering they can't agree on the basic equity structure of the permit, the field development proposal has Indo-Pacific bemused, to say the least.
"It's all quite surreal; no element of their so-called development program has been approved by the joint venture and they are in breach of section 13 of the joint venture agreement in putting this information out; not that it seems to disturb them," Indo-Pacific chief executive David Bennett told EnergyReview.Net today.
"Their representation of the outline of the Goldie pool is, to put it mildly, self serving, especially as they have no log information, I understand, over the zone, by which to identify the extent and quality of the Goldie sandstone in Kaimiro-19.
"They have not shown the southern extension of Goldie and have no basis from their data in Kaimiro-19 to extend the pool that far north," Bennett added, referring to Greymouth's Kaimiro-19 well which the Auckland-headquartered Indo-Pacific claimed had encountered the Goldie pool within the Kaimiro mining permit.
During the High Court case Greymouth claimed Indo-Pacific subsidiary Ngatoro Energy Ltd had damaged Goldie by its oilfield practices and production, yet Greymouth was producing Kaimiro-19 in a similar situation, Bennett added.
"Yes, I would be delighted to see a gas sales contract in place, and Goldie-1 back in production. We were nearly there with Shell back in July 2001, when the Shell asset sale process threw that in the dustbin.
"We could have had a gas and oil line to Goldie in 2001, but it didn't happen and if Greymouth had been attuned to working co-operatively, we could have had the same in place in the mid 2002.
"We could have had the Goldie pool properly appraised and developed by now and be way past the sole risk premium point, with Greymouth enjoying their entitlement to revenues," added Bennett, referring to the back-in by Greymouth to the sole risk Goldie-1 well.
He also described the proposed Tabla deviation as stupid at this time. "The well was drilled and cased in December, but has yet to be tested due to four months of Greymouth obfuscation.
"Now they come out with the idea that we should not even test what we have, but rather write-off those costs and spend a lot of money deviating the well. It's loony."
Greymouth's proposed Ngatoro development well was based on a misconceived concept and its proposed service lines in and between the two fields were questionable.
Bennett said the whole situation was like a Greek tragedy.
"Joint ventures are set up so that parties can work together to mutual benefit in developing the exploration potential of an area. There are always squabbles within joint ventures, but underlying that there is usually mutual respect and a mutual desire and intention to work in the best interests of the project.
"Greymouth appear unable to work in this way - they see everything as 'we win, you lose' rather than win-win. The end result has been loss of value and major cost to all participants, particularly Indo-Pacific but also Greymouth and NZOG."
New Zealand Oil and Gas exploration manager Eric Matthews was in Adelaide today and unavailable for comment.
