The facts about the city's role, jurisdiction and responsibilities regarding oil and gas exploration off its coast were not clear to the majority of Dunedin people, Mr Cull said.
Common ground needed to be found in the middle of the spectrum of vocal opinion.
To find this consensus, the city council planned to promote public discussion on the topic so future council submissions on any offer of a drilling block off Otago would reflect what the community wanted.
The move to help people better understand the issues comes after a protest disrupted a meeting during Shell's last visit to Dunedin and a full-page newspaper advertisement from local businesses in support of the industry.
Episodes such as those made clear the lack of information and understanding on the issues that faced Dunedin, Mr Cull said.
''That [the protest] seemed to just polarise views and nobody learned anything.''
The council was not looking to get agreement on whether exploitation of the resource would be a good thing, he said.
''It's more a consensus on the facts, like the limits of council jurisdiction, the merit of regional royalties, the economic and social implications of a possible production and support base, the environmental risks and considerations.''
At present, there was no local control over oil and natural gas exploration and extraction and associated industrial activity.
Despite that, the Government called for submissions from territorial authorities near blocks in the last block offer of drilling areas at sea, but the council had only a short time to make its submission and insufficient time to measure community opinion, as it would have preferred.
There was no knowing whether any blocks off Otago would be part of the next offer, but if the Government again decided to seek submissions from local councils, those councils would be notified in October or November.
It would be good to gauge public thinking before that, Mr Cull said.
''Developing some common ground on what the issues are and the parameters around them would be a good start.''
Council sustainability adviser Maria Ioannou said the council was looking at several ways of starting discussion.
It was considering posting on its website information on the council's role, jurisdiction and responsibilities around oil and gas exploration off its coast.
It was also in talks about organising public discussions in conjunction with Prof Andrew Bradstock, from the University of Otago's Centre for Theology and Public Issues, and Prof Colin Campbell-Hunt, from the Otago Climate Change Network.
''Then if we did have to do a submission, we could pull together opinions fairly quickly and more people would feel they could have a say, and we'd get less of this sort of shouting from the edges.''
