Comments Sought on Proposed Timings for 2006 East Coast Basin Blocks Offer

As industry will be aware, the Crown has recently concluded a blocks offer in the East Coast Basin.

Block K has now been allocated. Block I will shortly be removed from reservation and made available for prospecting or exploration Priority in Time applications.

Blocks J and L, will continue to be reserved for a blocks offer to open within the next few weeks. The reason for re-offering these blocks is that discussions with interested parties have satisfied Crown Minerals that there may still be competitive interest in these blocks. However, we believe that the terms on which these blocks were previously offered will need to be removed, with the only minimum conditions being those mandatory conditions in the 2005 Minerals Programme for Petroleum.

The purpose of this notification is to seek industry comment regarding a possible closing date for the blocks offer.

The data relating to these blocks has been available for some time and we assume that potentially interested parties will have already screened that data. Accordingly, a shorter than usual closing date would not appear to present significant difficulties. In this regard, we are tentatively contemplating an end of September closing date.

However, we are conscious of the need to have a bidding timeframe which will allow interested parties to assess the blocks and obtain financial and other approvals to bid. Therefore, industry is invited to provide comments to Crown Minerals regarding the proposed date, along with any other matters industry consider relevant to the blocks offer process.

Direct any comments to:

Mark Aliprantis

Manager, Petroleum, Crown Minerals

Tel: 04-474 2834

Email: mark.aliprantis@med.govt.nz

The closing date for comments is 21 June 2006