Indo-Pacific Energy chief executive Dave Bennett said swabbing of the lower interval, within the Kapuni formation, would continue for a few more days, while the partners tried to get measurable flows of oil.

Afterwards the Kapuni interval would again be tested, before moving up the well to test the fractured Murihiku Group metasediments.

"We have flared on a couple of occasions, and have been producing up to a thousand barrels a day, but that has been mainly drilling mud, fluids and other circulation material lost into formation during drilling."

Last week operator Marabella Enterprises, through parent company Bligh Oil and Minerals, said an acid wash of the well was to be done of the Kapuni, to remove any lost material that might be stopping the flow of oil.

This week Marabella Enterprises said production had yielded gas-cut water and that the water appeared to be formation water. No liquid hydrocarbons had yet been recovered. Former oil recovery, during the open-hole DST of the Kapuni formation, was believed to be from basal fractures in the Murihiku around the 7" casing shoe.

On completion of the current operation on the Kapuni, it was planned to suspend the Kapuni interval and to acid wash and production test the Murihiku formation, Marabella added.

Bennett said the partners were not yet disappointed. "While we have not flowed crude oil yet, only minor amounts of gas, some of the nearby Waihapa wells took weeks to come in, albeit from different formations."

If natural flows, from either or both intervals, faltered or failed then jet pumps - "to suck hard on the buggars" - could be brought in to aid hydrocarbons flows, Bennett said.

Over 28,000 barrels of drilling mud and circulation material were lost during drilling of the Huinga-1B sidetrack well, in PEP 38716 east of Stratford.

Commentators are hoping Huinga will prove to be the size of the more northern McKee oil field, which has produced over 40 million barrels of oil and 80 bcf since 1984.

Huinga, in licence PEP 38716, is on the eastern margin trend, the prospectivity of which has been established by the more southern onshore Rimu and Kauri discoveries, and further enhanced by the results of the recently drilled and suspended Makino-1 well.