The Government has granted the first new offshore petroleum exploration permit since it tore up the 2018 ban, handing an Australian company a 12 year search over a block of seabed off Taranaki.
Resources Minister Shane Jones announced the decision on Wednesday. The permit goes to EnZed Energy and covers roughly 546 square kilometres of the offshore Taranaki Basin, sitting east of the producing Kupe gas field and taking in what the industry calls the Kaheru prospect.
“This permit marks a major milestone for New Zealand’s energy sector and shows that without doubt, we are open for business,” Jones said.
He framed the grant as proof the policy reversal is working. “As the first new offshore petroleum exploration permit granted since the ban was reversed, it is a clear signal that confidence is returning and investors are once again prepared to back New Zealand’s resource potential,” he said. “For too long, policy settings discouraged investment in a sector that plays a critical role in supporting energy security, industrial activity and economic growth.”
Jones also made the case for gas specifically rather than oil. “Natural gas remains a vital part of New Zealand’s energy system,” he said. “It supports electricity generation when renewable output is low and provides an important fuel and feedstock for major industries.”
What the permit actually buys is more modest than the announcement suggests, and the Minister said so himself. “Exploration does not guarantee a discovery but it is an essential first step in understanding the resources New Zealand may have available to support future prosperity,” Jones said. The work programme is staged, and the first stage is desk work rather than drilling, beginning with a review of existing seismic data and geological studies to test whether the prospect is worth pursuing.
The company got here without a contest. EnZed Energy lodged its application in October 2025, which triggered a three month window for rival bids. RNZ reported in January that the window closed on 5 January with no other applicants, leaving the bid uncontested. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment still had to run a full assessment covering the work programme, the company’s technical and financial capability, its compliance history and its ability to meet health, safety and environmental requirements, alongside consultation with the Department of Conservation and local iwi. That assessment has now landed in the company’s favour.
EnZed Energy is a new entity. It was incorporated in Australia on 23 August 2025, about a month before applications reopened, and shares governance and premises with a carbon capture and storage firm. Its proposed programme involves reinterpreting seismic surveys already shot over the area, with no new surveying planned, an approach that sidesteps the seismic restrictions attached to the West Coast North Island Marine Mammal Sanctuary.
The ground itself has been looked at before and walked away from. A previous Kaheru permit was surrendered in 2017 after the holders concluded drilling there was uneconomic. Whether the numbers work better now is exactly what the first stage of the programme is meant to establish.
The backdrop is a gas supply problem that keeps getting worse. MBIE figures published in May showed proven and probable reserves fell 23 percent to 731 petajoules as at 1 January 2026, the lowest level in the 20 years the series has been kept. Of the 217 petajoule drop, 108 petajoules was gas actually produced and 109 petajoules came from operators marking down their own estimates, with the Pohokura field alone revised down 129 petajoules. Operators expect to produce 85 petajoules this year, 15 percent below the profile they filed a year earlier.
The legal groundwork was laid last year. The Crown Minerals Amendment Act passed its third reading on 31 July 2025 and received royal assent on 5 August, removing the ban on exploration beyond onshore Taranaki and changing the purpose of the Crown Minerals Act from managing prospecting and extraction to promoting it. At select committee, 5,219 submitters, or 94.5 percent of those who made a submission, opposed the bill. In September the Government added an open market pathway allowing companies to apply anywhere in the country at any time, plus a $200 million co-investment fund for new gas projects.
The opposition parties have not shifted. Green energy spokesperson Scott Willis said when the open market pathway was announced that “nothing says climate leadership like opening new oil and gas fields in the middle of a climate crisis”, and pointed out that it takes an average of 16 years to move from exploration to production. Labour has said it would reinstate the ban but honour permits already granted, which is the detail that matters most to a company holding 12 years of rights heading into an election. If you want to see where the parties sit on this and other issues before you vote, our voting tool lays out the positions side by side.
More applications are queued behind this one. Earlier this month Jones opened a fifth contest, this time for a deepwater prospecting permit off Taranaki sought by Taranaki Energy Pty Ltd, covering 9,972.5 square kilometres of seabed that has never been drilled. Rival bids for that block close on 8 October.
None of this puts gas into the pipeline any time soon. A permit is permission to look, the first stage here is reinterpreting old data, and even a discovery would take years and a great deal of money before it produced anything. The immediate significance is political rather than physical, because a permit granted is a permit that survives a change of government.
What do you make of the decision, and do you think the offshore permits will still be standing in a year? Have your say in the comments below.