New Zealand needs to be technically surveyed before anyone is likely to be interested in new areas of mining land, says the New Zealand Minerals Association.

The government has proposed a nine-month technical investigation into areas in Schedule Four that it did not have data for, additional to the 7000 ha proposed in Energy and Resources Minister Gerry Brownlee’s ‘Maximising our Mineral Potential’ document.

Forest and Bird says it won't be revealing its source to the State Services Commission on leaked information about mining on conservation land.

And Forest & Bird which recently hired former Department of Conservation head of national media relations Nicola Vallance, says Ms Vallance is "phenomenonly professional" and had not been a source of information.

Bidding has opened for an onshore block offer at the Kahili gas field in Taranaki.

The block is 5.99 square kilometres and includes an existing (Kahili-1B) well, closed but not filled in.

Although production at the field stopped in 2004 after the well unexpectedly filled with water, Energy and Resources Minister Gerry Brownlee said the crown believes significant volumes of gas might remain undiscovered.

Crown Minerals is this week expected to announce an onshore gas offer, but is keeping a lid on applications for its offshore Raukumara block offer.

Applications for exploration permits in two “substantial blocks” at Raukumara, on the northern end of the East Coast basin, closed last week and the government department says the number of applications received is commercially sensitive.

All bids are being “thoroughly evaluated” and will be announced in May.

The Court of Appeal’s decision last week in Todd Energy’s continuing saga against its Pohokura joint venture partners Shell and OMV is irrelevant to its impending High Court case, Todd Energy says.

Todd Energy alleges that partners, Shell Exploration NZ Ltd and Austrian explorer OMV NZ Ltd, conspired to hold gas production at a level below the multi-billion dollar gasfield’s capacity.