No official statement has yet been made by field owner Maui Development Ltd, or any other party to the Maui supply contracts, though it is known that the parties have agreed to appoint Netherland Sewell.

An official statement, detailing the terms and conditions and scope of the Texas firm's appointment, is expected to be made as soon as the official contracts have been signed, probably later this week.

It is understood Netherland Sewell has not worked on any major New Zealand oil industry projects before and that the Maui redetermination package will involve a substantial team, probably involving personnel from both the Houston and Dallas offices, working essentially full-time for several months.

The Netherland Sewell appointment, their investigation and subsequent report could end up costing the Maui contract parties $NZ2 million or more if, say, a 10-strong team spends three months conducting due diligence and another month writing up their results.

EnergyReview.Net reported earlier this month that the parties involved in the Maui redetermination row were about to issue the proposed scope of work to the various candidates and that bids from interested parties were expected to be received for the next few weeks.

Major Maui gas user Natural Gas Corporation announced in mid-June that an independent firm would be appointed to decide the level of remaining Maui gas reserves. As a result, Methanex New Zealand withdrew all its High Court proceedings against the field owner, Maui Development Limited and the Crown.

The parties to the Maui gas contracts - the New Zealand government, MDL, Methanex, NGC and Contact Energy - also agreed that, in addition to deciding the level of remaining gas reserves, the independent expert will also consider any issues relating to the inadequacy of information provided by MDL, as claimed by Methanex.

Former frontrunners for the work Gaffney Cline were ruled out since both NGC and Methanex had used them in the past and Texas-headquartered Forrest Garb and Associates was likely not to have been approached as the Treasury department has engaged them to do work for the Crown in the past.

Few industry commentators here in New Zealand have heard of Netherland Sewell, though it is a well established North American company, offering a complete suite of integrated consulting services encompassing geophysics, geology, petrophysics, modeling, economics and engineering.

The company says these inter-related disciplines enable it to predict more efficiently, and with greater accuracy, the performance of complex reservoirs. Of particular interest to the Maui redetermination issue would be the firm's expertise in reservoir analyses, probabilistic reserve modeling.

Netherland Sewell's conclusions should bring to a close the Maui redetermination matter, which could have turned into the most prolonged and bitter battle the New Zealand energy industry had seen for years. All parties to the Maui gas contracts have agreed to abide by the report's recommendations.