Maui gas field

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Maui natural gas field is located in the Tasman Sea, 35 km off the coast of Taranaki, New Zealand. It is located in 110 metres of water to the southwest of New Plymouth. Two platforms, Maui A and Maui B operate in the field. A FPSO (Floating Production Storage and Offloading) vessel Whakaaropai also operated there for the production of oil from Maui B, but was sold in 2005 when the recoverable oil reserves had been exhausted.

The field is New Zealand's largest gas, natural gas condensate and oil field, producing nearly three-quarters of the country's hydrocarbons, as well as providing energy for electricity generation.

The Maui gas field was discovered in 1969 by joint venture of Royal Dutch/Shell, British Petroleum and Todd Petroleum. It was considered a "giant" field at the time of discovery.

Government investment led to a governmental organisation (later called Petrocorp) taking a 50% interest. This was later bought out by Fletcher Challenge Energy.

Full production from Maui A began in 1979; Maui B was installed 13 years later. Much of the gas from Maui was used to supply the Motonui synthetic petrol plant, a Think Big project. The Whakaaropai FPSO was installed as part of the final development phases in 1996 and the onshore naphtha refining plant was installed in 1999.

The reserves of the Maui field are dwindling, but there is hope that another, currently undeveloped field nearby (the Kupe field) will provide economically viable reserves of gas. The Pohokura gas field has also recently come on-stream (in 2006), which has displaced much of the Maui production.