Sydney-headquartered Horizon said in its June quarterly report that tender packages had already been issued for the main components of the development, being the wellhead platform, floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) facility, plus the drilling contract.

“The tender process appears to be going well, with consistent and constructive dialogue between the project operator, OMV New Zealand, and the tenderers. The tender deadline of the end of July is expected to be met,” said Horizon company secretary Michael Sheridan.

Firm bid prices were necessary before the partners could make a final financial investment decision (FID) on Maari later this year. The FID process was expected to take several months - July to September - which would allow the award of contracts and materials purchases.

Design and construction was scheduled to start after that, with first oil from early or mid-2007.

Sheridan said the joint venture was also discussing a draft field development plan and petroleum mining permit application with Crown Minerals and other government authorities “to assure that government approvals are timely obtained”.

Maari is the largest undeveloped offshore oil field in New Zealand, containing at least 50 million barrels of recoverable oil (P50) in the Miocene-aged Moki formation.

Development is likely to also have the flexibility to tie-in the Maari M2A level reservoir and the separate nearby structure where the Maui-4 well flowed oil at the time of the original Maui field discovery in 1969.

OMV has not yet released likely development costs for Maari. Early this year Melbourne’s Cue Energy paid about A$6.2 million for Delta Oilfields’ 5% stake in licence PEP 38413, which equated to about A$2.48 per barrel.

The Maari partners are: operator OMV NZ (69%), Todd Petroleum Mining (16%), Horizon (10%) and Highlands Oil & Gas (5%).