Indo-Pacific said from Wellington today that flow testing of the top 15m of the 36.5m upper Tariki sandstones interval was continuing until the weekend. The well would then be shut-in for a pressure build-up survey, to enable initial reserve estimates to be made.

The first 200 barrel-load of condensate was transported by road tanker from the site, east of Inglewood, to Shell New Zealand's oil storage facilities at the New Plymouth port area earlier today.

Further daily load-outs of condensate for sale - to either Shell or Swift Energy New Zealand at its Waihapa production station - would be made on a daily basis for the duration of the flow test.

Indo-Pacific chief executive Dave Bennett said the condensate was a premium 52 degree API gravity, clear light oil with no significant wax or sulphur content.

Condensate to gas ratios continued to fluctuate, with flows of up to 40 barrels per million standard cubic foot of gas being recorded. Earlier this week the well had flowed at rates of 5 million cubic foot of gas per day through a 1/2" choke.

Bennett said significantly higher ratios of condensate could be expected through processing long-term production through a suitable treatment station such as the Waihapa plant.

He also said the drilling of the Tabla-1 exploration well, within the Ngatoro mining licence PMP 38148, had started and was now over 140m down to the 1828m target depth.

The well - situated 1.5km southeast of the Ngatoro oil field and 4.5km northwest of the Surrey-1 oil-gas discovery announced on Tuesday by Denver-based explorer Westech Energy - is to test the hydrocarbon-bearing potential of two reservoir targets showing as amplitude 'bright spots' on 3D seismic.

Potential reserves of Tabla, in the event of discovery, would be between that of Goldie and Ngatoro (which Crown Minerals estimates at 1.7 million barrels and 4.6 million barrels respectively).