Its arrival in Taranaki waters, scheduled for early October, will also be the first time New Zealand has had two jack-ups working at the same time.

The Ensco Rig 56 has been drilling the six offshore development wells for the $NZ1 billion ($A845 million) Pohokura project for about a year.

Origin Energy Kupe project director Peter Ashford told the 2007 New Zealand Oil and Gas Conference in New Plymouth yesterday that the near-new Rig 107, which had been working off Vietnam, was being loaded on to the heavy lift vessel Falcon in Singapore and due to start its three-week journey to New Zealand at the weekend.

Ashford also announced that Origin, which operates the Kupe project, had started a worldwide recruitment campaign, aimed at attracting over 40 permanent personnel for the company’s New Zealand operations.

Advertised positions include a commercial and finance manager, procurement and logistics manager, engineering manager, process and contracts engineers, production team leaders, and a training and development advisor.

“The oil and gas industry in New Zealand is thriving and it’s exciting to be part of it,” Ashford said.

He also updated conference delegates on progress with the $NZ1080 million ($A914 million) Kupe project.

Operator Origin’s relationship with alliance partner Technip was proving “extremely successful” and the Kupe project was still scheduled to deliver first gas in mid-2009, according to Ashford.

He said the fabrication of the Kupe topsides module, by Thai Nippon Steel in Thailand, was due to be completed next month, when it would be transported to New Zealand by heavy lift vessel to join the 550-tonne jacket, also built by Thai Nippon, which had been sitting in Port Taranaki since early August.

January would see another first for New Zealand, the arrival of the reel barge Apache that would be based at Picton near the top of the South Island, where it would load the Kupe gas pipeline and umbilical, said Ashford.

It would be able to load welded sections of pipe, up to 10km of total length, before laying them from the site of the offshore production facilities about 30km offshore to near the south Taranaki coast.

In good weather, the Apache could lay up to 1km of pipe per hour, much faster than an ordinary lay barge, according to Ashford.

He said construction of the onshore production station near Hawera was also progressing well, with site works underway and tenders out for the main pipe erection work.

About 100 people were working at the production station site. But this was still well short of the 350-400 peak that was expected next year – “which will stretch Taranaki and New Zealand resources to the limit”, Ashford said.

Production station contracts let so far totalled about $NZ125 million, with New Zealand companies winning 71% of the work by value.

Commissioning of the production station is scheduled to start in early 2009.

Kupe will supply about 254 petajoules of natural gas, 1.1 million tonnes of LPG and 14.7 million barrels of condensate over the expected 15-year-plus life of the field, according to Origin.

The Ensco 107 is to drill three development wells in the central field area (CFA) of the Kupe licence, plus at least the Momoho-1 exploration well, before moving further south to drill the scheduled five oil development wells, plus three water injection wells, for the Maari partners headed by operator Austrian firm OMV.

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

The Maari partners are operator OMV NZ (69%), Horizon Oil (10%), Todd Energy (16%) and Cue Energy Resources (5%).