Origin’s Kupe project director Peter Ashford told the 2007 National Power Conference in Auckland yesterday afternoon that the jack-up Ensco Rig 107 was now not due to arrive in New Zealand waters from offshore Vietnam, until September.
The rig had originally been scheduled to arrive in March but that was later delayed to June.
“There is a lot of ‘float’ in the offshore program so the further delay of the 107 will not affect the critical path of Kupe development,” Ashford told PetroleumNews.net.
On arrival in Taranaki waters, the Ensco 107 rig would install the jacket and, hopefully, the topsides – both of which are being fabricated in Thailand – in a job that could take one-and-a-half months.
Then the rig would drill three development wells in the central field area (CFA) of the Kupe field, a job that would take about six months.
There was still an option to drill two exploration wells in other parts of the CFA, where prospects included Denby, Leith and Stent, but no decision had yet been made which prospects might be drilled, Ashford said.
“There may actually be some advantages with this further delay in that we will be drilling during the more settled weather window of spring, summer, maybe autumn, compared to the winter,” he told PNN.
Ashford told delegates that a reel barge would be used, for the first time in New Zealand, to lay the Kupe products pipeline and umbilical, which would be much quicker than using a lay barge to do the same job.
The reel barge would load pipeline lengths directly from the coast and would lay them on specially constructed mattresses covering the pipeline route.
The reel barge could lay up to 1km of pipeline in an hour, completing the 30km pipeline route in a day or two, depending on the weather. This compared to a total time of 20-30 days for a conventional lay barge.
Civil site works should start soon on construction of the onshore production station in south Taranaki – “the critical path”.
Origin, which holds a 51.4% stake in New Zealand’s largest listed energy company, Contact Energy, was still confident of first gas ashore in mid-2009.
Origin, which now held the most exploration acreage of any one company in New Zealand with offshore permits in the Northland, Taranaki and Canterbury basins, was now “a major player and we are here to stay”.
The Kupe field holds 2P reserves of 254 petajoules of gas, 14.7 million barrels of condensate, and 900,000 tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas.
The Kupe partners are operator Origin Energy, with a 50% stake, New Zealand Oil & Gas (15%), integrated energy player Genesis Energy (31%) and Mitsui (4%).
