U.S. oil and gas company Anadarko is reportedly set to leave New Zealand, citing persistent low oil prices as one of the reasons.
The company has been exploring in New Zealand since 2008, with offshore acreage in the Canterbury, Pegasus, Deepwater Taranaki and New Caledonia Basins.
In 2014, Anadarko drilled two exploration wells: one in the Deepwater Taranaki Basin and one in the Canterbury Basin.
According to New Zealand’s BusinessDesk news website, Texas-based oil firm has already told its partners Lattice Energy Resources and Discover Exploration of its intention to resign as the operator of the Canterbury Basin.
Country head Alan Seay told BusinessDesk : “In this continued low oil price environment we have to make very tough decisions about where we invest capital and frontier areas like New Zealand will always find it hard to compete,” Seay said. “Sadly we’ve made the call we won’t be continuing with the New Zealand program.”
To remind, Anadarko last year made a decision to surrender two exploration permits in Pegasus Basin over an area of 7,085 square-kilometers off the Kaikoura and Wellington Coasts, much to the delight of the Green Party which had been campaigning against drilling off Wellington’s south coast.
Also, one could recently see that New Zealand is not in Anadarko’s plans, after the company revealed its capital investments budget for 2018. It has set aside $1.1 billion for its deepwater Gulf of Mexico operations.
When it comes to international investments, the company will spend $150 million toward its international cash-generating operations in Algeria and Ghana in 2018. These investments will support further drilling in the TEN development area, which is expected to start in early 2018, as well as additional drilling operations in the Jubilee field following the Ghanaian Government’s recent approval of the full-field plan of development.
Furthermore, Anadarko will spend $150 million during 2018 as the company advances the Mozambique LNG project. This investment will primarily be used to fund Anadarko’s portion of the costs associated with preparing the site of the future LNG park. All in all, there was not a single mention of New Zealand it the company’s capex plans for the year.
Offshore Energy Today Staff