100% Interest: 396,851 acres
Waitangi Hill has the potential to return early cash flow from shallow oil development, as well as providing the first modern data on the underlying Waipawa and Whangai Formation source rocks, an unconventional tight oil opportunity.
Drilling in the early part of last century reported ongoing production of high quality (50 degree API) crude oil from a depth of approximately 200m (650 ft). During recent fieldwork, this same high quality live oil was observed with associated gas to the surface in this old well bore. This oil was sampled and analyzed, and results indicate oil generation is actively occurring from the underlying Whangai Formation, which is both a high quality source-rock and unconventional reservoir target.
Drilling of three 250m (820ft) continuously cored test wells will be completed in early 2011 in order to gather critical data in and around the Waitangi-1 oil discovery, with the data from these wells providing critical information for assessing TAG Oil's exploration and development strategy for the Waitangi Hill discoveries.