TAG Oil Plans Return to Taranaki

TAG Oil (TSX:TAO, OTCQX:TAOIF) announced that it will abandon its petroleum exploration in the Waitangi Valley due to extreme drilling conditions and will now focus on its drilling rig at Taranaki to focus on its core oil producing assets at Cheal.

According to the press release:

The Company has agreed that after encountering extreme drilling conditions, including high-pressure shallow hydrocarbon zones, in the interest of safety, the surface section of the Waitangi Valley-1 well, located in Petroleum Exploration Permit 38348, will be plugged and abandoned.
The Company will now mobilize the Nova-1 drilling rig and ancillary services back to Taranaki to focus on its core oil producing assets at Cheal in Q3 of fiscal year 2015 ending December 31, 2014.

Garth Johnson, CEO of TAG, said:

Waitangi Valley-1 encountered very high hydrocarbon zone pressures at shallow depths that cannot easily be compared to anywhere else in the world. We understood this program would be challenging and we encountered extremely difficult drilling conditions in the first 856m of drilling.

Click here to read the TAG Oil Ltd. (TSX:TAO,,OTCQX:TAOIF) press release