Maari platform arrives in NZ

The wellhead platform for OMV New Zealand's Maari oil project arrived in New Zealand waters and the project is on track to be onstream in the third quarter of this year.

The Maari wellhead platform on April 11 sailed into New Zealand on board Dockwise heavy transport vessel Blue Marlin. The 10,000-tonne (11,000-ton), 150-metre (492-ft) tall platform will be unloaded from Blue Marlin in Admiralty Bay over the next few days. The next stage of the project will be preparing the platform for towage to the Maari field, OMV NZ's Managing Director Steve Hounsell said in a statement. "The trip, and the subsequent installation of the platform, is very weather dependent, and not without its technical challenges," he said. The Maari platform will be towed by two SEMCO anchor handling tugs, Salviceroy and Salveritas, to the Maari field, which is 80 kilometres (50 miles) off the coast of South Taranaki. Upon arrival at the field, the structure will self-install in102 metres (335 ft) of water. The platform will be connected to the Tanker Pacific floating production storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) Raroa. The FPSO is expected to arrive in New Zealand towards the end of April, having recently set sail from Jurong Shipyard in Singapore. The Maari oilfield holds an estimated 50 million barrels of oil reserves and has an estimated production life of between 10 and 15 years. The partners for the project were granted a 22-year mining permit to the oil field in 2005.

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