OIL WELL OFF TARANAKI

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31649, 8 April 1968, Page 1

OIL WELL OFF TARANAKI

(New Zealand Press Association)

NEW PLYMOUTH, April 7. New Zealand’s first off-shore oil well will be drilled towards the end of this year; it will be off the Taranaki coast. The cost will be more than $2 million.

The well will be located on the continental shelf, 22 miles off the coast and some 40 miles west of the Kapuni gas field.

The depth of water at the location is 375 ft and the well will be drilled by a self-pro-pelled ship which will be serviced from the mainland by helicopter.

The self-propelled drilling ship was chosen in preference to a semi-submersible or plat-form-type rig because the work will be carried out in water that is very deep by world standards and is likely to be rough as well. “Arrangements are now being completed for a marine drilling vessel to come to New Zealand to do the job,” the chairman of the exploration company, Shell, B.P. and Todd

Oil Services, Ltd (Mr D. H. Tudhope), said in announcing the company’s decision. “Plans for exploration have to be made on a long-term basis and the new venture is the next logical step after the Kapuni operation,” Mr Tudhope said. “It is going to be an exciting period for us all.” The drilling ship will be about 360 ft long, with a displacement of about 11,000 tons, and it will carry the drilling equipment amidships. “We are trusting that the months at the end of the year and early in 1969 will give us the best chance of finding water conditions less boisterous than those which often prevail off the Taranaki coast,” Mr Tudhope said. The intense seismic surveys carried out over the last two years have shown the consortium that a geological structure exists out to sea which is promising enough to justify the great cost of drilling off-shore, Mr Tudhope explained. There was, of course, no assurance that oil or gas would

be discovered, he said or that the quantities discovered would be great enough to warrant commercial production. “Experience world-wide shows that the odds against success are considerable but we are going to drill in the hope that we shall succeed.” Land Exploration

Recalling that the Shell, 8.P., Todd consortium had spent more than $2O million in New Zealand in the last 10 years in oil exploration on land, Mr Tudhope said that although costs had been great one of the satisfactory results had been the discovery of the Kapuni gas field.