Drilling for black gold to go deeper than ever off coast

By CHRIS DANIELS energy writer

A chance to explore for oil in the deep waters off Taranaki is being offered for the first time by the Government.

Five blocks, covering a total of 42,000 sq km, are being offered as part of the new oil exploration tender round.

They cover seabed next to the already productive Taranaki Basin, and extend down the continental shelf, in water ranging from 200m to about 1800m.

The blocks will be marketed around the world over the next year.

Oil explorers are asked to submit their bids by the end of next September.

Ministry of Economic Development officials will soon present seminars on the Taranaki Basin to oil companies in Singapore, Britain and Houston.

Associate Energy Minister Harry Duynhoven said the opening of a deepwater exploration area created exciting opportunities for the New Zealand petroleum industry.

Some oil industry analysts believed that 90 per cent of the world's undiscovered hydrocarbon reserves lay in ocean depths of more than 1000m, he said.

The Government grants exploration permits to those companies that promise to do the most amount of exploration work in the shortest time, not those that offer the most money.

Although exploration experts think there are billions of barrels' worth of oil lying beneath the seabed, it has previously been too expensive to recover.

But as the closer oil fields begin to run out, and as international oil prices increase, it becomes more attractive to explore in the deep ocean.

One of the disadvantages of exploring around the New Zealand coast is the lack of infrastructure in this part of the world.

It costs a lot more to bring drilling rigs here, as there is not enough exploration work to keep them permanently operating around New Zealand.

This will have to be taken into account by the oil companies, which will also have to pay the extra cost of operating in very deep water.

Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences geophysicist Chris Uruski, who helped to do the seismic survey of the area, has said the deepwater Taranaki Basin may contain as much as 20 billion barrels' worth of oil.