NEW ZEALAND: OFFSHORE TENDER

OGJ. New Zealand's Petroleum & Minerals (NZPM) has announced a 2014 tender for petroleum exploration permits. The offer includes five offshore and three onshore blocks encompassing 405,000 sq km.
"The areas comprise well-explored through frontier regions where little to no exploration has taken place," said Kevin Rolens, NZPM national manager.

The 2014 offshore blocks on offer include:
• Reinga-Northland basin (North Island), 75,190.50 sq km.
• New Caledonia basin (North Island), 49,051.79 sq km.
• Taranaki basin (North Island), 54,920.92 sq km.
• Pegasus-East Coast basin (North Island), 75,009.04 sq km.
• Great South and Canterbury basin (South Island), 141,755.68 sq km.

The onshore blocks are:
• East Coast basin (North Island), 1,341.43 sq km.
• Taranaki basin (North Island), 1,159.03 sq km.
• West Coast basin (South Island), 6,752.19 sq km.

The tender, which opened Apr. 2, will close on Sep. 25. According to NZPM, this is the government's third annual competitive tender round. Ten awards were licensed in 2013.
New Zealand's NZPM expects to award exploration permits by December. NZPM is providing data packs containing more than 239,000 km of 2D and 11,000 sq km of 3D seismic data.