Minority partner New Zealand Oil & Gas this morning said the jack-up Ensco Rig 107 had just started the batch drilling of the three development wells in the central field area (CFA) of Kupe, following the successful installation of the wellhead platform jacket and topsides module last week.

NZOG said drilling of the production wells was expected to take about five months to complete, with each well drilled in stages to a vertical depth of about 3400m into the primary reservoir of the CFA, the Paleocene-aged Farewell Formation.

The Kupe project is scheduled to be completed by mid-2009 and initial production is expected about 20 petajoules of sales gas.

Over the 19 year-plus economic life of Kupe, the field is expected to produce about 254PJ of gas, 1.1 million tonnes of LPG and 14.7 million barrels of condensate.

The Kupe partners are operator Origin (50%), Genesis Energy (31%), New Zealand Oil & Gas (15%), and Mitsui E&P NZ (4%).