Wellington, March 20 NZPA - New Zealand Oil & Gas (NZOG) and its joint venture partners from the successful Tui oil fields development have been awarded a new exploration permit in the offshore Taranaki Basin.

The new permit for an area of 3000sq km was immediately to the south of another area the joint venture already held, NZOG said today.

From analysis of existing data the joint venture believed there were several promising structures which could contain oil or gas.

But no seismic data had been acquired over much of the permit area since 1981 and no exploration wells had been drilled.

In the next year the joint venture intended to reprocess 800km of historic seismic data using modern analysis techniques, and conduct geological and geophysical studies, NZOG said.

In the second year, the joint venture had committed to acquiring, processing and interpreting 200km of new 2D seismic data.

A decision on drilling an exploration well was to be taken at the end of the second year.

The partners in the new exploration area are operator AWE New Zealand 44.3 percent, Mitsui E&P Australia 22.7 percent, NZOG 18.9 percent, and Pan Pacific Petroleum 14.1 percent.