The steel jacket – weighing about 550 tonnes – was towed from Thai Nippon Steel’s fabrication yards in Thailand.

Kupe project director Peter Ashford said the jacket’s arrival signalled the important offshore campaign was about to start.

The 53m high and 11m wide jacket will remain on the barge at Port Taranaki until the jack-up Ensco Rig 107 arrives in New Zealand waters from Vietnam sometime next month.

The fabrication of the associated topsides module, also by Thai Nippon Steel, is due to be completed by October and transported to New Zealand by heavy lift vessel.

The rig will be used to install the jacket and topsides, and to drill the three scheduled development wells, plus the Momoho wildcat well about 5km from production facilities in the field’s central field area (CFA).

The Kupe project is expected to be completed by mid-2009.

The Kupe partners are operator Origin (50%), Genesis Energy (31%), New Zealand Oil & Gas (15%), and Mitsui E&P NZ (4%).