Crown Minerals' petroleum manager Mark Alaprantis said freeing up options for exploration in relatively unknown offshore frontier regions could see a tightening of work commitment programmes in well-documented areas, such as onshore Taranaki.
The deep-water basins being promoted by Crown Minerals, such as the Great South Basin and the more recent Raukumara, posed timeframe difficulties for explorers, and clearer policy was required for regulations covering new petroleum concepts such as deep tight gas, coal seam gas, shallow biogenic gas and gas hydrates.
"Global oil rig scarcity and seismic ship availability are having an ongoing adverse impact on the pace of exploration of our deep-water frontier acreage,'' Mr Alaprantis told delegates attending the biennial Petroleum Conference in Auckland recently.
Instead of existing exploration permits being issued on a five-year-to-five-year basis, they could be changed to a framework of six years, then four to allow for the completion of first phase exploration.
New Zealand has in recent years seen examples of offshore-based oil rigs having been pencilled in for exploration work in New Zealand, but later diverted to other fields because of delivery and time constraints.
Mr Alaprantis said instead of explorers having to commit to test drilling within 48 months, under the proposed change that could be pushed out to a 60-month commitment.
"This would allow more initial information to be gathered on deeper basins from a cold start, and also offer some breathing space to deal with difficulties associated with rig scarcity,'' he said.
