Govt stops short of major energy shakeup

[harm_less]

as I was reading somewhere, we've already explored and extracted all the easy and quality 'stuff".  What's left now is the harder to get and/or lower quality 'stuff"

Maps showing the seismic data lines of Taranaki both on and offshore look like a spider's web. Other areas of promise off of Hawkes Bay and the eastern South Island are similar. If there was a sizeable reservoir of significance we would know it. 

And to further complicate things NZ is an earthquake prone region so many oil and gas reservoirs are fractured so they've either lost their contents long ago or what is there is in small separated pockets which are harder to extract from and expensive to develop with a habit of depleting very quickly if not handled with extreme skill and care. Historically such reserved have been plundered at haste so we are now seeing our older fields (e.g. Maui, Kapuni, McKee, Mangahewa, Pohokura, ...) on their last dregs with no new sources in sight.