Minority partner New Zealand Oil & Gas this morning said the wells had been safely suspended, pending the scheduled start-up of the Kupe field in mid-2009

NZOG also said that preliminary analysis of the well results, and in particular well testing, had confirmed the commercial viability of the wells and of the primary reservoir, the Paleocene-aged Farewell Formation.

The Kupe South-6, 7 and 8 wells had all flowed more than 31 million cubic feet of gas and over 3800 barrels per day of condensate in production testing last week.

The Ensco 107 has already been secured for moving to the Momoho wellsite, about 6km southeast of the Kupe production facilities in the central field area, NZOG added.

Given the fine weather off Taranaki, the rig is expected to start moving later today to arrive on location and spud Momoho-1 during the weekend.

Momoho has the potential to contain 100-150 petajoules of gas, although it could also hold oil.

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