Government opens eight areas for oil and gas exploration

Tue, 01 Apr 2014

By Pattrick Smellie April 2 (BusinessDesk) – The New Zealand government has opened eight new areas for oil and gas exploration in its 2014 Block Offer, unveiled at a petroleum conference in Wellington by Energy Minister Simon Bridges. A total of 405,000 square kilometres of exploration acreage is on offer and includes formally opening the previously unidentified New Caledonia Basin for bids, where Shell New Zealand has already been awarded an exploration licence out of sequence with the block offer system. “The three onshore and five offsho...

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