The announcements will provide some almost welcome relief for gas and electricity players battered by the doom and gloom of last month’s New Zealand Petroleum Conference and more recently, Meridian Energy pulling the plug on its NZ$1.2 billion Project Aqua hydroelectricity scheme.

Executives from the big gas companies - Methanex, NGC, Genesis Power, and Contact Energy - who have been waiting for months for something concrete from Pohokura partners, Shell NZ, Todd Energy and OMV, will welcome a call later this month for expressions of interest (EOI) for the first tranche of Pohokura gas.

Industry commentators say the first tranche of Pohokura gas offered is likely to be the easily accessible, near-shore gas that can be drained by deviated wells from a single onshore site. That could be for production of 200PJ or so of gas from mid-2006 - when the Commerce Commission says the project must be operational - to perhaps 2012.

Similarly, the same players, and others, will be delighted when the complex and sometimes tortuous negotiations regarding new Maui production profiles and provisions for open access to the Maui pipeline are finally concluded.

Negotiations - between the Maui partners Shell, Todd and OMV, the government, and Methanex, NGC and Contact - are believed to be in their final stages regarding extracting the last significant amount of gas from the offshore Taranaki field, new production profiles, and an open access regime for the Maui pipeline.

“It’s all done, ready for signing, apart from one party disputing some points and asking for further clarification. Things could be signed, sealed and delivered before the end of April,” said one commentator.

Maui, which used to provide up to 80% of this country’s gas, now has less than two years of economically recoverable reserves left at current contract prices, according to independent expert Netherland Sewell and Associates International (NSAI).

The field could be shut as early as 2007 if new contracts, including provisions for more expensive gas, are not signed.

However, a successful renegotiation could see about 55PJ, perhaps as high as 200PJ, of previously untapped gas recovered, which NSAI said was regarded as unrecoverable because it could not be accessed from existing platform wells.

Commentators say the partners will want to maximise liquids recovery from Maui but, because of increasing field risk, will probably call for bids on addiitonal gas on a year-by-year basis.