New Zealand First has unveiled it will be campaigning for an offshore oil and gas reserves survey as it goes into the 2026 election, with the party saying the initiative will require an initial investment of $1 billion.
NZ First leader Winston Peters announced the policy at the party’s 2026 campaign launch on Sunday, which was held in South Auckland.
Peters said that to create a National Subsurface Development Survey, NZ First will be campaigning on an initial investment of $1 billion over the term of government.
The $1 billion proposed survey will identify and create one national dataset across energy, geothermal and CO₂ storage sites.
According to Peters, this will help create a framework for New Zealand to then develop those sites, extract those resources and build the country’s “resilience and prosperous economic future”.
“New Zealand has ten prospective basins with world-class potential, the Great South Basin has had eight wells drilled in its entire history and the deeper horizons are untested. The existing seismic data is two technology generations old, covering only a fraction of our subsurface inheritance,” he said.
Peters said New Zealand potentially holds “Norway-scale energy prospects in our offshore basins“ and that potential has never previously been accurately surveyed or characterised with modern tools.
“If we identify those reserves in our basins, we will have the ability to utilise the natural resources we have to make our country secure, prosperous, and to build real resilience,” he said.
“Under this plan we would expect to see first results within twelve months and convert that potential into knowledge that global capital can bid against. This is at a time when we are in the midst of the largest basin-capital movement in a generation.”
NZ First expects to have the surveying of the highest-ranked basins completed within two years.
“Potentially within just six years, we will have a pathway forward for our country to own and control our own supply of energy that we can use domestically and export around the world,” Peters said.
He told attendees in his campaign speech that the existential threat to fuel security and fuel supply was one of the most concerning issues currently facing New Zealand.
Peters added that since the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz had begun earlier this year, capital is now moving into “politically stable basins” elsewhere in the world. But for capital to move, it needs modern data, he said.
“We have seen the immediate effects of being isolated and totally dependent on international supply lines of oil and gas, and the dramatic and costly effects it has on New Zealand’s sustainability, planning and future certainty,” Peters said.
“We are totally susceptible to the geopolitical choices made by other nations in the cost, supply and certainty we need as a country to survive, today and into the future.”
‘Goes back to the '70s’
Following his campaign speech, Peters told reporters the inspiration for the proposed policy goes “way back to the '70s” when England and Norway found North Sea oil reserves.
Norway discovered the Ekofisk oil field in December 1969 and England detected its first major Forties oil field in October 1970.
Peters said while UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had decided to turn those oil revenues “into tax cuts”, Norway had decided to put that money in a sovereign fund. As a result of Norway’s decision, that fund, the Government Pension Fund Global, is currently valued at over $2 trillion.
“I know who made the right decision,” Peters said.
He said he had a “good idea” of the royalties that could be gained from the results of the $1 billion proposed survey – but wouldn’t reveal what those royalties would look like. However, he confirmed that the NZ Government would own the findings of the survey.
Peters reiterated that the current subsurface survey knowledge is 20 years old. “It's primitive compared with what we should be knowing,” he said.
The new survey will find out how wealthy the country can be, he told reporters.
30 Comments
What absolute lunacy. The future is not fossil fuels.
Exploration to date has been more than casual and the prospects of a major discovery of gas or oil or both well evaluated by now by those involved. Hard to reconcile the optimism here with the reality of the relative history.
Friends who are in the industry have said repeatedly that the guys doing the past exploring, have not been allowed to look where they wanted to, rather constrained by tight permit areas.
I think there is more oil and gas to be found, but maybe the correct thing to do is start exploring the possibility of molten salt thorium reactors so we can produce more electricity and hydrogen for heavy machinery.
How many molten salt reactors are there at the mo?
Absolute waste of (more) money. Norway doesn't have an opposition party vehemently opposed to offshore exploration/drilling. As long as that remains the case here in NZ, no one is coming to drill.
That's not the point.
Norway did the 'swapping the family cow fr five magic beans' trick. A fairy story, note.
They had energy, now they have proxy. For what, ex energy? Proxy for nothing, is the answer.
But it is spin to compare the North Sea with NZ. And we need to follow the money - NZF are boing funded, one way or another, and this is spin on behalf of a cohort, one way or another. Like Jones and fishing, so are the oil lobby to NZF, apparently.
Michael Laws is going to be seen as having fleas - will be interesting to ask him why he's scratching.
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I'm not disagreeing with you PDK, I'm simply commenting on the topic at hand as most people see it. I know you view things vastly different from "most people" but it doesn't mean others views should not be heard.
Just a quiet question: Do numbers of people holding an opinion, measure the proximity to truth of said question?
The NZF neandarthals just lost my vote
I bet NZs neanderthal voters are drooling though.
They are appealing to their core voters polling is up to 11.5% well up on the last election.
Isn't that what parties are meant to do... try to win?
I agree. Everyone needs representation, even neanderthals. It's probably why previous neanderthals went extinct. They burned their own cave down and refused to exit, claiming the smoke was only Casey burning lost emails? ?
They never had my vote, and they never will. I see them going one more term, then folding.
The party is Winnie. Jones has the personality of a turd.
I think who replaces Christopher Luxon is a better discussion, this will be his last Rodeo
Re NZF I like Laws, he is batshit crazy, but a smart kind of batshit crazy... he wanted to ban patches way back
Jones swims with the foxes, runs with the dogs. Can't be trusted
I wonder if Labour are going to have any policys this year?
I still think Hippy will run out of gas just after 7th August
“Potentially within just six years, we will have a pathway forward for our country to own and control our own supply of energy"
Um, someone needs to tell Winston the production would be owned by the corporate owning the rights and infrastucture. Product would go to the highest bidder in the global marketplace. Whatever is produced would be loaded and shipped to Singapore for refining, never to be seen again! The only benefit to NZ would be the backhanders to friendly politicians.
Winston should get outside occasionally and have a look at the big yellow thing in the sky
Yep NZ needs to stop bludging on defense and energy and pull our own weight.
rcr.media/episodes/dave-bennett-oil-gas-exploration-veteran-expert-nz-could-be-refining-diesel-in-a-year/
"Norwegian operators benefit from a system whereby capital expenditure is substantially deductible against taxable petroleum income, with the government effectively co-funding a significant share of exploration and development risk.
...Indeed, discovering oil in Norway was a close-run thing. By October 1969 American firm Phillips Petroleum, now ConocoPhillips, was the last oil company left in Norway still searching for black gold, and was down to its last test well left to drill.
The company was even reluctant to drill that, so fruitless had exploration been, but prevailed under pressure from the Norwegian government after it threatened to charge a break fee equivalent to the cost of drilling. Two days before Christmas that year, the company confirmed to the government it had found what has gone down as one of the world’s biggest oil fields."
https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/what-norway-s-3trn-wealth-fund-can…
I didn't realise you were a socialist profile?
“The most important lesson is that it is possible to maintain 78 per cent tax over a long period of time.”
— Diderik Lund, emeritus professor in economics, Oslo University
"In the five years before the ban was introduced, the industry drilled 37 development wells at a cost of $1.4 billion. In the five years after the ban, the industry drilled 54 such wells at a cost of … $1.4 billion."
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/05/15/the-mystery-of-the-disappearing-gas-r…
So another billion will find the elusive reserves...and all in 24 months
No, But Winnie has learned from Trump - and to a certain extent, from the continued existence of Jones.
The lesson is that if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes fact.
Isn't NZF $bn oil and gas exploration plan a bit like someone who can't pay the rent deciding their best option is to take there last few bucks down to the pokies to see if that will pay the bills?
The gas and oil industry invested $3bn+ in exploration in the last decade or so and made no commercial discovery.
If the private sector spending many $billions failed to find anything why should another $billion of our taxes be gambled on the government making a commercial find?
Indeed...though even with that it may be preferable to investing 1 billion plus in a LNG terminal....at least we can only lose the billion up front with the exploration.
Norway’s early offshore oil and gas exploration in the 60s was initially funded by a mix of foreign pvte oil companies and the state.
By the 80s, Norway’s own state-owned and Norwegian private companies (Statoil, Norsk Hydro, Saga Petroleum) were major funders and operators of exploration, gradually reducing reliance on foreign operators while still partnering with them.
Norway was smart.
https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/kilde/oed/bro/2002/0006/…
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