Singapore-headquartered SembCorp Marine is converting the Andaman Sea oil tanker into the Raroa which, together with the wellhead platform, is scheduled to be installed off south Taranaki by next March.
Sydney-headquartered Horizon – in its preliminary final report for June 2007 financial year – yesterday said the jack-up Ensco Rig 107 that will be used for Maari development drilling had now left Vietnamese waters and was expected off Taranaki next month.
Kupe operator Origin Energy and partners will use the rig first for drilling the Kupe development wells, plus at least the nearby Momoho-exploration well, before Maari operator Austrian firm OMV takes the jack-up.
Horizon said its 10% share of the growth in forecast capital expenditure before first Maari oil would be covered by the cost overrun facility associated with the original $US40 million loan arranged with the Bank of Scotland International.
The Maari project cost was originally set at US$365 million, then $US419 million.
Horizon also said its onshore Papua New Guinea seismic work was progressing well.
The PRL4 and PRL5 joint venture partners – including Horizon, InterOil and New Zealand’s Austral Pacific Energy in both permits, and Santos in PRL5 – were advancing commercialisation options for the Stanley (PRL4) and Elevala (PRL5) discoveries.
Planning was now underway to record a 40km seismic survey over the Stanley feature to better define the resource size, while reprocessing of 120km of existing seismic over the Elevala discovery had led to the decision to process a further 232km on the licence area.
Meanwhile in Thailand, Horizon has begun started recording a large 2D seismic program of 2500km in Block G10/48 and 3000km in G11/48.
Horizon announced an after-tax loss of $US1.9 million (about $A2.33 million) for the year, the same as for the 2005-06 year.
The Maari partners are operator Austrian major OMV (69%), Todd Energy (16%), Horizon Oil (10%) and Cue Energy Resources (5%).
