OIL FIND OFF COAST OF TARANAKI

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31943, 21 March 1969, Page 1

OIL FIND OFF COAST OF TARANAKI

Extent Of Field Not Yet Known

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, March 20.

A decision will be made within a few weeks whether to begin the next major phase in the search for oil off the Taranaki coast.

This next stage will cost the exploration company involved about slom, an investment on which there may be no return.

Mr D. H. Tudhope, managing director of SheD -BP - Todd Oil Services, Ltd, who earlier today announced that crude oil had been brought ashore from the Maui I well. 33 miles off Onunake. said this tonight in a telephone interview from his home at Kelburn.

Six thousand gallons of crude oil was brought ashore at New Plymouth today in the supply vessel Smit Lloyd 10.

Mr Tudhope said the sample came from the “bottom half” of the well, which went to 11.515 ft

The oil flowed strongly from the well, he said. The oil will be refined at the New Plymouth oil refinery. near Ngamotu Beach. The company’s general manager, Mr H. R. Williams, said: “I think we have been fortunate in that in our first well we found something, but this does not necessarily mean that in our next well we would find anything. “With Kapuni we found something in our first well, then we put down others in the area and a dozen other assorted wells around New Zealand and didn’t get a sniff of anything in the lot.”

Mr Williams said that when the drilling rig Discoverer n left Maui 1 the well would be sealed with cement plugs and a cap. An acoustic “pinger” would be fitted, capable of 'emitting a signal for several years, so that the well could be found easily. The rig at the Maui 1 well was used by Esso Exploration and Production in its unsuccessful bid to find oil 45 nautical miles north-west of New Plymouth late last year. Drilling for 100 days, Esso spent $2.5m on the venture. The Shell-BP-Todd consortium spudded in Maui 1 on January 27.

Mr Tudhope said all the information needed to make the decision had been gathered during the last fortnight However, time was needed

to digest the information before the decision could be made. This would take two or three weeks. He said data obtained during the last two weeks were being evaluated by overseas experts, including one man flown at short notice from The Hague. About s2m has been spent on the project so far. “I think we could definitely decide to go ahead if things look as good after evaluation as they do now. At present things look very encouraging. “However, this has to be given a great deal of very careful consideration. We would be committing our-

selves to an expenditure of slom with no guarantee, even; at this stage, of getting any; reward for our money.” The appraisal series would involve the drilling of about] five wells to delineate the size of the structure and to prove assumptions made as a result of the present tests. Mr Tudhope said the next stage would be the production series. But even if all went well, this stage was “quite a long way off." The appraisal series would tell the company where to place its platform. From this platform a possible eight or 10 wells would be drilled during the production series. He said the present well, and those drilled during the appraisal series, if it went ahead, would not be used for production. “They would probably be written off,” he said.