New Zealand's subsurface sector stood at a crossroads this early September, and the room in Auckland felt it. With output easing at mature fields like Maui and Pohokura, the 2018 offshore exploration ban now lifted, and one of the world's most significant geothermal endowments still largely untapped, the question hanging over two days of talks wasn't whether the country's next chapter in energy would be written, but who would write it, and how fast.
Workshop Chairperson Anna Kruk-Michot of OMV Exploration & Production was struck by the extent of the ban's toll on the local upstream sector. She found the mood among New Zealand participants increasingly positive by the workshop's close — evidence, she said, of the value of open, focused discussion. Fifty delegates from 29 organisations and 10 countries answered that question simply by showing up: regulators sat beside international operators, geothermal developers beside seismic technologists, university researchers beside service company leads, all pulled toward the same reopening frontier.
The workshop opened with a ministerial address from Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Resources and Associate Minister for Energy, and welcome remarks from Chairperson Anna Kruk-Michot of OMV Exploration & Production, before James Caldwell of Energy Resources Aotearoa opened the keynotes with the regulatory and political context for exploration past, present and future, and Ranjit Pannu of SLB followed on what it will take to unlock New Zealand's subsurface potential. The oral sessions leaned hard into basin insights and case studies: an overview of the country's sedimentary basins gave way to fresh looks at the Pegasus Basin's Gondwanan petroleum system and the Eocene Mangahewa reservoir fairways offshore Taranaki, before the afternoon turned to results on the ground — drilling campaigns and seismic amplitudes at the Maui gas field, an assessment of underground hydrogen storage prospectivity in the Taranaki Basin, and Kaheru's case for re-entering a reopened upstream sector as a genuine first-mover opportunity. The day closed on technology and innovation in the field, with new 3D and 2D seismic merging techniques, a low-impact high-channel-count nodal survey at Tariki, deterministic seismic-tile screening for amplitude and AVO anomalies, and a look at behavioural maritime intelligence for offshore operations.
Day two shifted the same four themes toward geothermal, opening with Greg Ussher of Upflow on the synergies between oil-and-gas and geothermal technologies and Evelien Wallace of the New Zealand Geothermal Association on what the country's petroleum legacy can teach its geothermal future. Basin and geothermal insights continued with magnetotelluric research mapping the Taupo Volcanic Zone, a survey of natural hydrogen systems across Aotearoa, and a case for repurposing old petroleum wells and subsurface data for geoheat development — resource integration in practice. Technology and innovation carried through the afternoon with multi-input machine-learning reconstruction of exploration attributes, microbial and CO2 cushion-gas controls on hydrogen loss, and neural-operator-driven digital subsurface acceleration for reservoir characterisation and CCUS, while sustainability and future outlook framed the day's sharper questions: why New Zealand isn't yet a major petroleum province and what would need to change, and whether the depleted Tariki Gas Field could be redeveloped as a strategic gas storage and CCUS facility.
The two days converged on the Strategic Panel Session, Prospects for New Zealand's Future Energy Needs, moderated by Dr. Mac Beggs of PEP Ltd. and bringing together Alexander Karvelas of SLB, Dr. Andy Butler of Sunda Energy, Prof. Ian Wright of the University of Canterbury, and Greg Ussher of Upflow, before Anna Kruk-Michot returned to close the workshop.
Across the sessions, Kruk-Michot heard broad agreement: industry cooperation and stable, predictable policy are essential to bringing operators back. Policy change toward oil and gas remained the biggest perceived investment risk. Discussion covered practical paths to a stronger energy position, from new technology and gas storage to geothermal development and research institutions.
For Kruk-Michot, the central lesson was that New Zealand needs an ecosystem connecting upstream companies, government, academia and research institutions to regain investor confidence and turn technical potential into activity. The change in mood over two days showed why such workshops matter: they create the cooperation needed to keep the industry moving.
Contributors from Colombia, the UK, Australia and Malaysia added comparative geothermal and hydrogen case studies to a programme that stayed distinctly local in focus — proof that New Zealand's reopening basins are being watched well beyond its shores.
None of it happens without New Zealand Petroleum & Minerals as Official Supporter, Platinum Sponsors SLB and Sunda Energy, Supporting Organization the Geoscience Society of New Zealand, a Technical Programme Committee of 19 chaired by Anna Kruk-Michot, and every delegate who travelled in to be part of it.
