Top Crown Minerals officials who have toured the world promoting the upcoming new blocks on offer in the deeper water Northland and Raukumara Basins, say NZ ranks in the top five of new frontier regions for oil exploration. Crown Minerals petroleum manager Mark Alaprantis and chief geologist Dr Richard Cook say despite the current prevailing economic situation, oil companies they saw are proactively looking at new exploration opportunities. “They are keen to get into position so as to take advantage of them in the near term. NZ is now featuring in the top handful of areas of interest, which is very encouraging.”

Data packs for the 2 basins have been sent to the majors as a result of seismic data acquisitions funded by the Govt. GNS Science had also contributed some technical reports around the seismic data. The two officials gave detailed technical presentations to, among others StatoilHydro, Total S.A, Maersk, ENI, Petrobras and OMV. Alaprantis says “experience and expertise in frontier deeper-water basins is what we have targeted.” Some of the companies have already gone some way in evaluating the technical data, while others are about to start. Signs of success won’t become evident until the first offer closes in January 2010, and the officials expect most of the bids will not arrive until just before the closing date. Alaprantis believes interest is growing because other companies who see OMV and ExxonMobil exploring in NZ waters regard this as a reason to be looking at the NZ blocks. “NZ is a place where there is a lot of under-explored areas and has the potential to contain very large volumes of oil and gas. They see it as compelling to look at.” While deepwater exploration is more costly, it is becoming more commercial and the competition from explorers is increasing. The National Govt recently announced extended funding for seismic data acquisition.

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