The company started recruiting staff last September, when Kupe project director Peter Ashford said his company wanted to attract over 40 permanent personnel for its New Zealand operations.

It advertised for 10 positions, including a engineering manager, process and contracts engineers, production team leaders, and a training and development advisor.

Now it wants to hire another 10 permanent staff, including various technicians, a project engineering superintendent, and an environmental and community affairs manager.

Origin's New Zealand country manager, Chris Bush, told PetroleumNews.netthat most of these latest positions were still dedicated to the NZ$1.1 billion ($A0.93 billion) Kupe project, while others dealt with Origin's onshore Taranaki assets or overall business activities within the country.

He said Origin NZ presently had about 14 permanent staff - excluding the 25 or so seconded to the Kupe project - but that number would increase to about 75 once Origin's $US87.8 million ($A102 million) acquisition of Swift Energy's New Zealand assets was completed next month.

The company had last week used the Ensco Rig 107 jack-up rig to drill the Kupe South-7 Sidetrack 1 well to its final depth and is now completing that well and the two others as producers.

"Completing the wells - putting in the production tubing and finishing off the actual wellheads - will take about 20 days," Ashford told PNN.

"We will then test the wells, taking a couple of days for each well and then several days of demobilisation before we are ready to jack down and move on to Momoho."

The Momoho well and sidetrack were drilled to test the west and east compartments of the Momoho prospect, which are separated by a fault.