Greymouth Petroleum has surrendered three oil exploration permits in central Taranaki. There's been no media coverage, but I noticed while doing a routine check of exploration permits that the map looked a little different, and checking with the permit spreadsheet pinned down the missing permits as 60097, 60098, and 60099. A query with NZPAM confirmed that they were surrendered on 16 May 2021. According to the 2015 block offer (when the permits were granted) he surrendered area totals 121 square kilometres. Map below:
(Meanwhile NZPAM is still showing the supposedly surrendered offshore South Island permits as still being active, so I'm not sure what's going on there)
