Land M Oil not seeking oil

Press, 12 May 1981, Page 18

Land M Oil not seeking oil

PA Wellington Costly off-shore oil exploration is not on at present for L and M Oil (N.Z.), Ltd. Neither L amd M, nor its 61 per cent-owned subsidiary, Radius Oil, Ltd, are included among the companies which have been issued with licences for exploration to the west of New Zealand. The L and M secretary (Mr Dennis Tait) said yesterday that the company made a decision some time ago to withdraw from oil exploration.

“We were very disappointed at hot being allowed to participate in the Taranaki programme which we initiated through Radius Oil and which later involved the discovery of the McKee field . . . ironically named after our company’s founder.”

Mr Tait said that L and M spent about $580,000 through Radius to explore the McKee field. Because of a Government move then to extract more revenue from successful oil exploration, this work ceased and many licences lapsed. “Our licence was among those which expired and we were unsuccessful in getting back into the area. Most of the most-promising areas were taken over by Petrocorp.

"A major reason for our lack of interest in off-shore exploration is the tremendous costs involved, several million dollars a well. If something promising came up, there’s no doubt we would be very interested, but at present we are devoting resources into the search for gold in .the South Island,” Mr Tait said.