Privately owned Greymouth Petroleum has been looking for opportunities to expand its presence in the Auckland residential gas and electricity market. The firm, already possessing gas fields in Taranaki, is said to have found more gas reserves at the onshore fields that prompted it to come up with new plants for Auckland.

Chief Operating Officer, John Sturgess, "Discovery of these onshore gas reserves increases the potential for further sizeable New Zealand gas finds in the near future and reduces the prospect that New Zealand will need to import highly priced gas from overseas."

Recently conducted tests claim probable reserves of 134 petajoules and 3.2 million barrels of condensate in the fields brought by Greymouth for an undisclosed sum in May last year as informed by spokeswoman Lara Walker.

Crown Minerals yesterday awarded mining permit over 68sq km for 15 years to the firm.

Walker informed, "We've got the green light. This demonstrates that sizeable and significant discoveries are still to be made on onshore Taranaki."

Greymouth, supplying gas to the Ballance Agri-Nutrients fertilizer plant and other firms in Auckland, is currently building a 3MW gas-fired power station in Papakura to light up around 4000 homes.