He said 35 wells were drilled in 2013, which climbed to 45 last year but has plummeted faster than the price of oil to just three this year. This year 12 permits have been surrendered compared to nine last year.
"There's been many changes in conditions with companies wanting to do things over a longer period of time, but that said, that's all off the back of a record couple of seasons. The $2 billion turnover was a record in what was already a global market feeling the affects of declining oil prices as supply stepped up and demand sagged in China. In a very subdued market globally the sentiment for New Zealand is very strong. While not being immune to global trends we can certainly buck them," Bridges says.
There was still strong interest in seismic work. Long dated work programmes, which give explorers years to decide whether to pull out or drill, have made the country attractive to explorers.
However, Bridges says spending this summer will be much lower.
"What that means is not hundreds of million of dollars of spending but tens of millions - it's very much [in] keeping with the Government agenda of mapping as much as possible and seeing where the petroleum might be to maximise production."
Bridges says attracting Chevron and Norwegian oil giant Statoil taking significant stakes in the Pegasus Basin in the last block offer round were widely seen as "rabbits being pulled out of the hat".
Interest in block offers - where companies bid for acreage and are awarded permits - early next year will be a litmus test for the industry.
Bridges has just announced four proposed offshore areas and one proposed onshore area, covering a total area of around 537,000sq km as part of the offer.
Opponents say New Zealand needs to concentrate on clean energy and consultation is now under way with iwi and local authorities in the areas and winning bids will be announced in March.
Leading energy analyst John Kidd, from Woodward Partners, says the industry is coming off a natural peak.
"New Zealand exploration has [historically] been extremely lumpy and episodic, last summer four offshore rigs in operation simultaneously - now we've got none," Kidd says. "We've definitely come off a peak - people like to attribute that to oil price very quickly but that's not the case. It was going to happen as part of the natural cycle."
The subdued oil price would, however, make investment decisions much tougher.
"You've definitely got an oil price overlay in terms of the spend profile. It's going to be a very difficult proposition over the next couple of years for investment decisions to be made," he says.
The seismic work would continue and this country might be in a good place in the cycle.
"In the years ahead we might look back at this period and say New Zealand might have been in the right place at the right time," Kidd says. "No big money was planned to be spent but companies are pushing along quietly in the background."
While Kidd does not have a view on the timing, oil prices will recover and investment decisions become easier.
"That's not to say that companies aren't going to have to revisit their own work programmes in the meantime, that's particularly the case in the small to mid cap space where oil price is the hand that feeds. Even big companies with big balance sheets are constraining their spend."
Around the world oil workers have been laid off. In Norway at least 20,000 workers have lost their jobs in the downturn.
Cameron Madgwick, the chief executive of the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of NZ, says the current economic climate means the focus for exploration is very much onshore rather than offshore.
In terms of production the numbers are very positive. Oil production is up in 2015 as a result of increased investment by the industry in 2014. The major drivers of growth this year are Maari (Maari Development Project) and Tui (Pateke 4H), Madgwick says.
This followed a big year for gas production in 2014 - its highest level reached in 12 years.
"There is no doubt the low oil price has created challenges for the sector but history tells us that oil prices rise and fall in a cyclical nature and the industry in New Zealand is increasingly taking a long-term view," Madgwick says. There is a need to continue to explore for petroleum to meet the world's energy needs, he says.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) was forecasting global oil demand to grow by 0.2 per cent in 2015. This is the fastest pace of growth since 2010 and driven by consumers reacting to lower oil prices.
In 2013 the oil and gas industry directly employed 5068 full-time equivalent employees and created employment for 11,720 full-time equivalent employees nationwide, Madgwick says.
But a representative of opponents to offshore exploration, Mike Smith, says New Zealand needs to move on from an oil-focused economy and forget about looking for more.
"We've all been wrong-footed by climate change," Smith says. "Nobody realised what the catastrophic impact of climate change would be."
While oil had benefited society, it was time to make the transition to clean energy.
"Oil has been an amazing resource but there's been a hidden cost that we hadn't been aware of and it's time to have a rethink about using fossil fuels on the way forward."
