SOME HISTORY • East Coast basin is 120,000 sq km between East Cape and Kaikoura, and about half the area, comprising the Raukumara Peninsula, Hawke’s Bay, Wairarapa, and Marlborough, is onshore.
• More oil and gas seeps than elsewhere in New Zealand. The phenomenon was known to Maori and attracted the attention of European prospectors from the 1880s onwards.
o Two wells sunk at Waitangi Hill in 1874 and 1875, but, while there were indications of high-pressure gas and oil, the company folded under financial difficulties the following year.
o South Pacific Petroleum also sank its first wells at Waitangi Hill, with one producing enough oil to cart downhill and sell at Gisborne.
o A new site on the Waingaromia valley floor was tried in 1884 and oil was encountered, producing between 20 and 50 barrels per day.
• In late 1887, escaping gas was ignited by the boilers and the wooden rig burned down. The rig was rebuilt, but investors had lost confidence and the company closed in 1890. However, Waingaromia remains the most productive oil well drilled in the East Coast basin to date.
• The Southern Cross Petroleum Company drilled seven wells at Rotokautuku, near Ruatoria, between 1881 and 1888. Oil was struck in 1887, 270 barrels being produced in the first month before the drilling rods became stuck because of swelling ground and blow outs.
• The Minerva Petroleum Company, which was based in Gisborne, explored the area near Whatatutu in the late 1880s. As had the Southern Cross Company, it found shows of the high-gravity oil used for kerosene lighting rather than the waxy crude of Taranaki. Some of this exploration and drilling activity took place on Maori land leased from the owners in return for a 5 per cent royalty.
• Between 1909 and 1912, five wells were drilled in the district – at Waitangi Hill, the Totangi oil seeps, and the mud volcano deposits at Waihirere, Mangaone, and Waipatiki. New Zealand Oilfields Limited was the most committed company in the area, sinking three wells, but the Gisborne Oil Company, the Kotuku Oilfields Syndicate, and Mangaone Oilfields Limited were also active.
• Most of the early exploration of the East Coast area had been undertaken by small companies and syndicates, but after the First World War, larger companies – Taranaki Oilfields Limited, New Zealand Petroleum, and Shell BP Todd – began to take interest in the region. Taranaki Oilfields became the most active explorer in the area in the late 1920s following a substantial geological mapping programme covering huge tracts of country recently stripped of bush for pastoral farming. But the problem was the same then as now: despite widespread signs of oil and wet gas seeps all over the district, there was but no easy way of locating payable accumulations.
• As in Taranaki, the first seismic surveys resulted in further drilling activity in the late 1950s and 1960s – by Shell BP Todd at Mangaone and Ruakituri and by New Zealand Aquitaine Petroleum at Opoutama, Taradale, and Rakaiatai. This activity continued into the following decade, when further wells were drilled near the Waitangi and Rotokautuku seeps and in the southern Hawke’s Bay.
• Offshore exploration began in the 1970s when Shell Todd relinquished its onshore interests and entered a joint venture with Aquitaine. An extensive marine seismic survey was undertaken before drilling Hawke Bay 1, the first offshore well to be sunk in the region, which found significant gas shows. A new phase began with an onshore seismic survey by Petrocorp in 1984, which was followed by the drilling of Rere 1.
• In 1998, a find near Wairoa, by Westech Energy-Orion Exploration, stimulated further interest and resulted in two other moderately sized discoveries in the area.