Skip to main content

Welcoming O&G

From a global perspective, New Zealand is a frontier oil and gas location. It’s proven success record, open, low risk and straightforward entry and permitting process have seen it attract significant momentum around the oil and gas industry.

New Zealand has:

  • Significant petroleum potential
  • Underexplored basins
  • Straightforward permitting
  • Freely available seismic and interpretive data

The New Zealand Government is committed to ensuring that New Zealand is a highly attractive global destination for such investment.

The Government has recently made a number of policy changes that have underscored this commitment, including:

  • Strengthened support and communications to raise the profile of the petroleum sector
  • Greater availability of information to assist investors and the development of the O&G resource
  • Review of legislative framework around regulations, royalties, and taxation to ensure it is business friendly, fair and equitable
  • A review of capability and resourcing for management of the resource estate.

In August 2008 a United Nations Commission confirmed the significant extent of New Zealand’s maritime entitlement. New Zealand now has sovereign rights over more than 5.7 million square kilometres of seabed. This means that in addition to its onshore resources, New Zealand has an extensive offshore area of significant petroleum potential.

As a result of these and other recent positive developments, the latest global benchmarking report from the Fraser Institute has boosted New Zealand’s attractiveness as an oil and gas investment location from a ranking of 30th in 2009 to 18th in 2010.

An oil and gas portal

The EnergyStream website offers a comprehensive and growing range of resources to demystify and develop the oil and gas industry in New Zealand.