New Zealand Invests $20 Million in New Offshore Gas Projects

New Zealand has made further progress in restarting domestic gas production with a new round of funding targeting offshore exploration projects. Resources Minister Shane Jones and Associate Finance Minister Chris Bishop this week announced $21 million financing for two offshore gas projects. The financing will be made through the Gas Security Fund (GSF), a $113 million state-owned investment facility to ramp up gas production in New Zealand.

One of the projects considered for funding in this round is EnZed Energy’s Kaheru offshore gas exploration in Taranaki Basin. The project will receive $12.19 million for a time-limited equity arrangement. The project has a total cost of $40.2 million with EnZed Energy seeking to raise the remaining $28.1 million from other investors. Initially, the project will prospect the Kaheru field to determine whether commercially recoverable gas is present.

The Australian explorer EnZed Energy was awarded gas exploration permit by New Zealand in July. It was the first such rights to be issued by the country after reversing the 2018 ban on offshore oil and gas exploration. The 12-year exploration permit covers about 546 square kilometers in the offshore Taranaki Basin, east of the producing Kupe field.

“This project targets an estimated 182 petajoules(pj) of additional gas reserve in the Kaheru permit. That’s equivalent of nearly 25 percent of New Zealand’s January 2026 proven and probable gas reserves,” said Minister Shane Jones.

According to government petroleum data, New Zealand’s natural gas proven plus probable reserves as of 1 January 2026 was 731 pj, a decline of 23 percent from last year. The Ministry of Business noted that this was the lowest level of natural gas reserves since recording began 20 years ago. Jones added that projects such as Kaheru could be a significant new source of domestic gas supply, helping meet New Zealand’s energy needs in the coming years.

The other project to receive the funding is led by the oil services company Schlumberger New Zealand (SLB). The company was awarded $8.2 million to provide industry players with free access for two years to its proprietary seismic data, spanning New Zealand’s key exploration provinces. Over the years, SLB has assembled an extensive seismic library, comprising over 28,000 km2 of 3D data and 5,000 km2 of 2D seismic coverage across both the Taranaki and East Coast basins. As part of the funding, the government wants SLB to combine this fragmented subsurface exploration information into a single, basin-scale, AI-enabled dataset, to be delivered in industry standard format.