The Seaworks specialist catamaran MV Seawatch, which arrived in Taranaki waters on Sunday, has nearly finished a short geotechnical survey operation that will help determine the exact pipeline route from the planned nearshore mini-platform to the north Taranaki coast.

The MV Seawatch, a specialist 23m motorised catamaran that carries a submersible remote-control drilling rig, has been drilling five 5m-deep test holes, between 500m and 3km from the shore, to test the planned route in which the pipelines will be laid.

A second specialist vessel is expected to arrive in January to do further foundation-testing work - this time for the up to three production platforms that are to be installed. Singapore-based drilling ship STM Markab is scheduled to do that work, drilling three 100m-deep test boreholes at each of the possible platform locations to be installed between 5km and 11km off the Motunui coast.

Some work along the foreshore and onshore areas is also planned. This will be to test the strength of the planned pipeline route from the Motunui cliff top to the low-water mark and a truck-mounted drilling rig is to drill a series of boreholes along the incoming pipeline route and throughout the site of the Pohokura production station.

Next month will also see a 10-week roadworks project start, which will be aimed at improving access to the proposed production station and nearby Lower Otaraoa Rd.

Pohokura operator Shell Todd Oil Services also expects to next month call for tenders for the major site earthworks construction contract for the production station, with work on the four to five-month project scheduled to start in February.

Pohokura is New Zealand's second largest petroleum resource after the rapidly dwindling Maui, though it is only a quarter the size of the original Maui field, with current P50 estimates of 750 Petajoules of recoverable gas. First Pohokura gas is scheduled to come ashore in mid-2006.