There are people who think there are hundreds of millions, perhaps even billion barrel oil fields down there or trillions of cubic feet of gas.

It's so under-explored it's almost unexplored...in fact some of our petroleum basins have not had a single well put in them.

New Zealand is an remarkably under-explored country, and with hydrocarbon deposits found in all the near-shore petroleum basins there is enormous potential in its our oceans.

So we have an interesting situation which the court must resolve.

We've given a lot of the data away and a lot of companies have studied it - some companies have made bids on the basis of receiving the data.

What will it do to the infrastructure of the town? Who is going to pay for that?