OMV has a 74 percent stake in the Pohokura gas field in Taranaki. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
The country's biggest oil and gas producer is looking to sell its New Zealand assets.
Austrian-based OMV is looking for buyers for its exploration and production operations in the Asia-Pacific region, including all of its New Zealand operations.
"A potential divestment aims at optimizing the E&P [exploration and production] portfolio in line with the OMV Strategy 2030," the company said in a brief statement issued in Vienna.
Last year, OMV said it would reshape its global business by [https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/478460/omv-signals-exit-from-fossil-fuel-energy-production reducing oil and gas production by 20 percent by 2030 and ending it completely by 2050].
"OMV, in co-ordination with competent regulators and governmental authorities, will invite potentially interested parties, in a first step, to submit expressions of interest and, in a second step, to submit binding offers," the company said, adding the process was expected to take several months.
The company has a 69 percent stake in the Maari oil field, 74 percent of the Pohokura gas field, and full ownership of the Maui field - all of which are off the Taranaki coast - as well as three offshore exploration permits, and onshore storage facilities.
It entered New Zealand in 1999 but had a significant expansion in operations by buying the production operations of Shell NZ for US$578 million in 2018.
A long planned sale of its controlling interest in the Maari field to a Singapore-based company was scrapped last year after complications arising from government regulations on the management and decommissioning of oil and gas fields.
The government has banned new offshore oil and gas exploration but deferred a decision on new onshore exploration permits.