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 NEW
ZEALAND
Australasia
Geologically New Zealand is a microcontinent created
when the Tasman Sea and the Antarctic Ocean opened in the early
Tertiary. Many basins surround the country but only the Taranaki basin
is productive.
Small quantities of oil have been produced onshore in the
Taranaki basin for many years and several small fields still produce
here. However the 3rd offshore well drilled by the Shell, BP and Todd
consortium (SBPT) in 1969 discovered the giant offshore Maui
gas/condensate field and the New Zealand energy situation was
transformed.
Maui came onstream in 1979, producing gas and condensate
from the Maui A conventional steel platform, which lies 37 kms from the
coast in 110 m of water. In 1970 an oil leg was discovered in Maui-4 but
it was considered non-commercial at the time.
 The Maui B platform, installed in the mid 1990s to tap
gas in the southern part of the field, was strengthened in 1999 to drill
wells to tap this oil which was delivered into an FSO, permanently
moored near the Maui B platform since 1996. In 2004 SBPT announced the
decommissioning of the FSO but Maui will continue to produce condensate,
extracted from the gas.
A number of other smaller, and formerly marginal, fields have also
been found offshore. In 2007, the Tui field complex came onstream, the
largest offshore oil development to be produced in New Zealand. In 2000 the Pohokura gas/condensate field was
discovered just north of the peninsula close to the coast. It lies
wholly offshore but some extended reach drilling is possible from
onshore. The field also came onstream in 2007 and is being developed from a single offshore, unmanned
platform 8 km from the Taranaki coast with 6 wells plus 3 onshore
development wells accessing the southern portion.
Besides extending Maui’s life, developing Pokohura and
exploiting marginal fields the
focus is on frontier basins and deep waters all along the coast. The
government has made all areas outside Taranaki available under an
Available Frontier Offer (AFO) scheme however New Zealand’s frontier
basins have generally seen sparse, unsuccessful, drilling programmes.
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