American oil company Anadarko does not expect its exploration plans in the Canterbury basin, off the coast from Dunedin, to be affected by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Anadarko has a quarter share of the BP well spewing oil into the gulf and is also involved in joint ventures to explore the prospects near Dunedin and others in Taranaki.
After the spill began, United States President Barack Obama placed a six-month ban on new deep-water drilling in US waters, although that is being challenged in court.
External communications manager for Houston-based Anadarko, John Christiansen, told the Otago Daily Times this week the company's seismic programme in New Zealand was "right on target with where we wanted to be" and he did not consider the United States ban would lead to greater emphasis on exploration here.
"While we will look to possibly reallocate some of the capital that we would have spent in the Gulf of Mexico ... I think the majority ... may go towards our US onshore assets.
"I think the New Zealand programme, it's been determined for this year and it continues to move along that path."
Anadarko spends $5.3 billion to $5.6 billion each year on exploring for oil and developing oil fields. It has about 30 wells being drilled at any given time.
Mr Christiansen said exploration, particularly in deep water, was one of the "core skill sets" of the company.
"We are also a very strong development company. Once we do find deep-water discoveries, we have industry-leading capabilities in bringing those discoveries on stream faster, in an economical way."
Mr Christiansen said the work being done on the Carrack and Caravel prospects in the Canterbury basin, about 65km off the coast from Dunedin, consisted of "reprocessing" three-dimensional seismic data collected by Origin Energy.
The data was being entered into Anadarko's models to get a better understanding of oil prospects.
"Once we've identified those prospects, and they meet the criteria that we set for the types of prospects that we want to pursue, then we start what's called `high-grading' ... determining which prospects look like they have the best potential and taking a hard look at those.
"There is a significant amount of potential there. It's still very early in the exploration phase."
Preliminary estimates have indicated Carrack and Caravel could together contain 700 million barrels of oil or as much as 2800 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
It was "extremely important" for the company to be working in the waters of a country that was politically stable.
"Any time you are looking to conduct operations in a foreign country, or trying to find basins that make sense for your company, you want to try to work in a place that has a stable fiscal regime and a stable regulatory regime.
"There's always going to be uncertainty but whatever you can do to reduce that uncertainty is certainly going to make certain basins more attractive than others."
