First production from the Maari oilfield, 50km off the Taranaki coast, which was scheduled to begin this month, may be delayed until closer to the end of the year. Bad weather has delayed batch-drilling the first 3 production wells. Eventually there will be 5 oil-producing wells and 3 water injection wells. The wellhead platform and the FPSO Raroa were installed on schedule and the $US525m project was 80% complete by the end of June.

The Ensco-107 jack-up rig underwent maintenance after drilling production wells in the Kupe project, as well as the Momoho exploration well, but has been subject to stormy weather since it moved to the Maari site. The build-up in production from Maari, which has reserves of about 50m barrels (and potentially of 85m bbls) is expected to reach around 35,000 barrels of a oil a day by the second quarter of 2009. The Austrian oil giant OMV is the operator of the Maari field, and its partners include Todd Energy (16%), Horizon (10%) and Cue Energy (5%).

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