Good riddance

OMV is quitting the Great South Basin and surrendering its permit:

Austrian oil giant OMV, which had a permit to explore the Great South Basin for oil and gas but failed to find anything when it dropped test wells earlier this year, this week announced it would no longer search for gas and oil in the area.

[...]

BusinessDesk reported OMV and its partners, Beach Energy and Mitsui & Co, had surrendered two major offshore permits, including its permit in the 16,715sqkm Great South Basin.

It meant New Zealand would be left with about 36,000sqkm of exploration areas, about a third of the size it was before the Government declared an end to offshore exploration permits in April 2018.

While the ODT version of the story is vague, according to BusinessDesk the other permit being surrendered is off the coast of Wairarapa. Combined with the news that Beach Energy had cancelled drilling in the Canterbury Basin - meaning it cannot meet its permit terms before expiry - this means that all the big East Coast permits will be gone. The only surviving ones will be Clipper (52717) and Toroa (55794), both operated by NZOG. Both have "drill or drop" provisions requiring a commitment to drill a well to be made by April 2022 (and a well to be drilled by 2023), so if we're lucky, they'll both be gone soon.