American oil giant Anadarko remains committed to its $US30 million ($NZ36.5 million) pledge to a deep-water test drilling programme in the Canterbury Basin 65km off the coast from Dunedin, but is yet to make a final decision on the drill date.
Anadarko is arguably one of the most experienced deep-water drillers in the world, but its plans come hard on the heels of environmental protests off the North Island's East Cape recently of a shipborne seismic survey undertaken by Brazilian oil giant Petrobras.
Anadarko is considering leasing a "dynamically positioned semi-submersible" oil rig to drill near the historical Caravel and Carrack prospects areas in depths of 1100m-1500m.
Anadarko is the operational partner in a 50-50 joint venture with Australian-listed Origin Energy to drill the Canterbury Basin.
From its second round of shipborne seismic testing earlier this year, the data processing was so far providing encouraging results, Anadarko's Texas-based director of external communications John Christiansen said when visiting Dunedin yesterday.
"Drilling a well is the obvious next step ... A decision to drill at the end of the year, or early next year, needs to be made in the next few weeks or months," Mr Christiansen said.
Mr Christiansen said part of the reason for a visit to New Zealand of four Anadarko representatives, including general manager of Asia-Pacific exploration Jeff Oslund, was to allay environmental concerns.
"We want to engage communities and reassure people about our environmental practices and safety record," he said.
Mr Christiansen said Anadarko had successfully been the operator driving about 150 deep-water wells, beyond 900m, during the past decade without incident.
Anadarko was a 25% non-operational shareholder in the ill-fated BP-owned Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico which exploded in April last year, killing 11 crew and releasing an estimated 5 million barrels of oil into the ocean.
Anadarko and well-operator BP appear destined to resolve their differences over contractual obligations in legal action.
Mr Christiansen believes Dunedin has a better than 50% chance of providing "some sort of shore base" for the drilling programme, but with only one or possibly two holes being considered, it would have a presence for only a matter of weeks in the city.
The majority of Anadarko's oil and gas production is from onshore sites in the United States, but it is ramping up oil production towards 120,000 barrels a day from a new offshore Ghana site and is looking at development options for several natural gas finds in Mozambique.
