Work to start on Pohokura gas field

A drilling rig will start work on Taranaki's billion-dollar Pohokura gasfield development this week.

The Seawatch, a 23m motorised catamaran that carries a 7m-high submersible remote-control drilling rig, berthed at at Port Taranaki on Sunday.

When it heads to Pohokura, it will drill five 5m-deep test holes between 500m and 3km from the coastline.

The holes are required to test the route that pipelines will be laid on. The work is expected to last less than a week, depending on the weather.

A second vessel is to arrive this month to do further foundation-testing work, this time for the production platforms which will be as much as 11km offshore.

Pohokura, being developed by Shell Todd Oil Services, is New Zealand's largest gas discovery after the Maui field and holds more than half New Zealand's known gas reserves.

- NZPA