New Zealand Oil

I extracted this from Energy and Capital and it is a surprise. Best is that jurisdiction works for everyone. Thus it will see quick development. I know mega fields discovered in Africa over thirty years ago that remain utterly untouched.

At least the rest of the world is now receiving a glowing lesson on how the USA in particular is able to turn on a dime when local resource extraction becomes possible. USA production has jumped an astounding twenty percent in the last year. Better this growth appears poised to continue at least until pricing drops.

New Zealand is also capable of ensuring rapid exploitation. At the moment, no one really knows what the scale of the reserve actually is but it is odds on for been at least a multibillion barrel field.

We will be hearing more about this one.

New Zealand's Sleeping Oil Empire

By Brian Hicks |

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

http://www.energyandcapital.com/

There's a sleeping oil giant out there, and it's a place few ever associate with fossil fuels — or heavy industry of any kind, for that matter...

As I've written about before in these very pages, one of the easiest ways to discover oil is to look down at the ground.

For centuries, man has been using oil he has found seeping at the surface.

Oil seepages — which were once common in North America and helped early oil prospectors find the bonanzas hidden under the ground at places like Spindletop, Texas, and California — are occurring right now in New Zealand...

To date, more than 300 seepages have been discovered in the Kiwi nation, with more being added every day as geologists continue surveying the landscape and the shallow water just offshore.

Most interesting of all is that all this began quite recently...

It was only in 2007, when an earthquake off New Zealand's Stewart Island brought an oil seepage to the surface, that international interest in the region as a potential untapped source of crude began to gain momentum.

Since that discovery, this growing interest has opened thousands of square miles for exploration and evaluation.

How much potential?

Well, as a small indicator, a lone well off the shores of New Zealand’s D’Urville Island (population: 52), is said to contain as much as 100 million barrels.

All told, geologists have recently estimated total NZ oil reserves (within all the major, known oil-rich geology across the nation’s major basins) to be well into the billions of barrels — perhaps even more than is contained in all of the now legendary Bakken.

Given this potential, it does not take a great leap in logic to understand why the likes of BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell have all sought to gain a foothold in this untapped corner of the global oil and gas market...

As an investor, this amount of interest in something that has remained virtually untouched by modern industry is definitely exciting. But staking fortunes on the most established names is hardly the best way to get in on the ground floor of this (or any) opportunity.