Kupe To Boost NZ’s Oil And Gas Output
June 4th, 2009
NZ’s oil production, with output building up from Maari (32,000 barrels a day) and Tui (19,000 barrels a day), will be boosted again when the $1.1bn Kupe gas/condensate project comes on stream in the next few months. With all its offshore construction completed, Kupe operator Origin Energy reports the onshore production station west of Hawera is 94% finished, and work on testing many of the systems is underway.
Kupe is contracted to supply 20PJ of gas a year to Genesis Energy, but will also produce 2m barrels of condensate and 100,000 tonnes of LPG a year. Currently 900 workers are engaged on the project but when it is commissioned only 20 will be needed to operate the production station. Reserves at Kupe have been estimated at 254PJ of gas, 14.7mmbbls of light oil and 1.1m tonnes of LPG, but Origin Energy has been undertaking reservoir modelling and is due to present an update of the reserves later this month.
Kupe is expected to be commissioned by September and reach full production by the end of the year. Meanwhile output from the Tui field off north Taranaki is continuing to run ahead of pre-commissioning estimates. The original trajectory for Tui production indicated it would be declining from 19,000 barrels a day in March of last year, but the field has been more productive, both physically and financially, than the joint venture envisaged when it was commissioned in July 2007.
The Maari offshore field, which achieved first production in March, is reported to be producing 32,000 barrels a day, and is expected to reach full production of 35,000 barrels a day, when the final wells are drilled. Both the Tui and Maari joint ventures are getting the benefit of recent increases in crude oil prices, up from around $US40 a barrel in January to around the current $US65-70.
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Duncan Cotterill