Dependencies with version ranges cannot be resolved in offline mode

We are using Maven version ranges for several dependencies in our project. Shrinkwrap is able to resolve those correctly as long it has access to the remove repository (or mirror). However, when the resolver is put into offline mode (workOffline()), dependencies with version ranges cannot be resolved any more although they are present/cached in the local .m2 repository.
The reason seems to be that as soon as you use version ranges, maven-metadata.xml files are used. However, when being in offline mode only maven-metadata-local.xml is inspected during resolution but not maven-metadata-mirror.xml (for example). maven-metadata-local.xml either doesn't exist at all or contains only locally install ed artifacts but no cached remote artifacts.