The Texas-based company has been unable to find a rig for its proposed drilling campaign off the Taranaki and Otago coasts this summer, postponing plans for test wells in both regions.
The Energy Bulletin website yesterday quoted Anadarko New Zealand corporate affairs manager Alan Seay as saying a suitable deepwater rig would not be available until January.
"We expect to commence our drilling programme during the summer drilling season in late 2012," he said.
However, a meeting between four company delegates, including Anadarko general manager of Asia-Pacific exploration Jeff Oslund, and Dunedin councillors next week was going ahead.
Cr Jinty MacTavish told the Otago Daily Times last night she had "not been advised to the contrary".
The meeting invitation, which Anadarko extended to all councillors this week, outlined a timetable as a discussion point and she assumed this development was part of that, she said.
The private talks would discuss offshore drilling in the Canterbury Basin, 65km from Dunedin, in depths of 1100m-1500m.
Mr Seay said on the website the company would "continue engaging with the Government and local stakeholders as we refine our evaluations and science work".
Mr Oslund told a New Plymouth conference in June his company had a tight timetable for finding a suitable exploration vessel and bringing it down in time for the 2011-12 summer.
He said Anadarko would like at least one other joint-venture partner to share the mobilisation and demobilisation costs of as much as $US90 million ($NZ107 million) to import a dynamically positioned semi-submersible rig.
Greenpeace said unnamed sources in the industry had suggested part of the reason for the deferral of drilling might have been a mounting tide of opposition to a seismic exploration programme off Gisborne by Brazilian state oil company Petrobras.
Greenpeace NZ climate campaigner Steve Abel said the announcement was a small gain in moves to favour "clean" energy sources over fossil fuels.
Anadarko's decision to postpone drilling followed the Government's failure to find any takers for its offshore oil block offers off Northland's coast, and a decision by Austrian energy giant OMV NZ to put off until September 10 its deadline for committing to exploration in the Great South Basin, south of Stewart Island.
