Oil and gas majors not returning to NZ, says industry body as it waits for word on LNG
Monday, 9 February 2026
Big oil companies may never return to New Zealand to search for oil and gas, leaving the future of the industry in the hands of junior explorers and gas importers, says the chief executive of Energy Resources Aotearoa, John Carnegie.
The industry body lobbied strongly for the lifting of the former government’s ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration permits and has been guarded in the past about the option of meeting domestic demand with expensive imported LNG.
Energy Minister Simon Watts and Resources Minister Shane Jones are due to speak at a breakfast hosted by the ERA on Tuesday, amid speculation an update on a Government plan to underwrite the construction of an LNG terminal is imminent.
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Carnegie said there were any number of scenarios about how an investment in an LNG terminal could play out, agreeing it was possible it might be built but never used, but said the country had “got to the point it's widely acknowledged that we'll need it as an insurance scheme”.
“There is a lot of uncertainty around the extent to which we'll use it, but if it’s seen as an insurance scheme — as a backstop — I think it will have a place in the market, one way or another.”
The ERA’s annual breakfast has become a key event in the energy industry’s calendar.
Carnegie believed the mood on Tuesday will have moved on from the buoyant and bullish tone of two years ago, shortly after the 2023 election, when Jones promised to “rehabilitate and re-legitimise” the sector, indulging in rhetoric that the minister acknowledged might appear “cavalier and slightly over the top”.
Carnegie expected the mood among members would be serious.
“There has been a fair bit of movement over the last year in terms of government policy. I think this year will be one where the Government may well look at the sector and say, ‘now it's your turn’,” he said.
“The sector realises that it's got a job of work to do. Everyone knows that the cost of energy is going up. Everyone needs to step up to the plate and invest to ensure that it doesn’t continue to spiral.”
Three months after applications for new offshore oil and gas exploration permits opened, interest has been minimal.
But a start-up based in Adelaide, Enzed Energy, has applied for a permit to prospect for hydrocarbons just off the coast south of Hāwera, and a US firm, Jetex, has used the new permitting regime to apply to drill for gas onshore in a coal mining area near Huntly.
Carnegie also noted Todd Energy and Greymouth Petroleum had some success last year, with Todd expanding its Pohokura gas field and Greymouth Petroleum increasing its reserves onshore in Taranaki.
“We're not going to get ‘majors’ over here again, if ever to be honest,” he said.
“Given that we're effectively a start-up sector again, we need to enliven the sector with the juniors and let them do their work, and then hopefully the sector will start to regrow.”
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