Oil and gas industry in New Zealand


The oil and gas industry in New Zealand explores and develops oil and gas fields, and produces petroleum products and natural gas.
In 2018, New Zealand's self-sufficiency in oil was 17%, i.e. the country imports its petroleum product needs. All local oil production is exported as the New Zealand refinery is not suited to processing it. In 2018, 60 petajoules of crude were produced in New Zealand, 380 PJ of petroleum products imported, and 283 PJ consumed. The difference is exported or used for international travel.
Oil and gas are produced from 21 petroleum licenses / permits, all in the Taranaki basin. The most important fields are Kapuni, Maui, Pohokura and Kupe. Exploration for oil and gas reserves includes the Great South Basin and offshore areas near Canterbury and Gisborne.
New Zealand has one oil refinery, the Marsden Point Oil Refinery. The major industry body is the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand.
There are 2,600 kilometres of high-pressure natural gas transmission pipelines in the North Island. Most of these are owned and operated by First Gas, including the Maui pipeline, a 307 km pipeline that carries 78% of all natural gas produced in New Zealand. The low-pressure gas pipelines that distribute gas to end users are owned by First Gas, Vector, Powerco and GasNet.
The largest retailers of gas are Contact Energy and Vector. There is no natural gas transmission in the South Island. New Zealand has one underground gas storage facility, the Ahuroa Gas Storage Facility.

History

In 1865, the Alpha well was drilled near Mikotahi at New Plymouth. This was the first oil well in what is now the Commonwealth and one of the first in the world. A petroleum industry developed at Moturoa, including producing wells and refineries. The last refinery there was closed in 1972. The field continues to produce small quantities of oil.
The Kapuni gas field in South Taranaki was discovered in 1959 and brought into production in 1970. The North Island natural gas network started operating in 1970, initially supplying Kapuni gas to Auckland, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Wanganui, Palmerston North and Wellington. The off-shore Maui field was discovered in 1969 and brought into production in 1978. This supported the development of many large energy projects, including gas fired power stations at New Plymouth and Huntly, ammonia-urea plant at Kapuni, gas to methanol plant at Waitara and the synthetic petrol plant at Motunui.

Oil and gas fields

Proven and probable reserves, ultimate and remaining, as at 1 January 2019
Producing fields
FieldUltimate oil recoverable
Remaining oil reserves
Ultimate gas recoverable
Remaining gas reserves
Kapuni7041,142143
Kupe217533311
Maari446
Mangahewa1610648403
Maui22754,331110
McKee47026463
Pohokura62151,563714
Tui476
Turangi106376277
Others561231580
Total600719,1732,102