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Partners in New Zealand's Maari oil field say they have found a substantial second zone of oil and successfully drilled a horizontal production well through the reservoir containing an estimated 30-40 million barrels of oil-in-place.
The field operator is OMV NZ (69% share), with Australia's Horizon oil (10%), New Zealand's Todd Maari Ltd (16%) and Cue Taranaki Pty (5%) holding the remaining stakes, the OilVoice.com website reported.
Austrian-based OMV is already a large player in New Zealand where it owns a 26% stake in the Pohokura gas field, the country's second-largest, which came onstream in October 2006.
Horizon Oil said that the M2A sandstone reservoir is about a quarter of the size of the oil-in-place in the main Moki formation.
A horizontal well MR9, 1,209 metres in length, was drilled through the M2A reservoir and encountered net oil pay over half the distance - about 660 metres.
Horizon Oil said that an estimate of the recoverable reserves for the Miocene-aged M2A sands will not be available until production data for the MR9 well has been obtained and a development plan for the zone established.
Horizon has previously estimated the M2A zone would contain about 12 million barrels. The latest oil-in-place figures suggest the recoverable reserves could be greater than this.
The M2A appraisal/development well was drilled by operator OMV New Zealand to a total measured depth of 3,048m with the Ensco 107 jack-up rig and has been completed as an oil production well.
The partners' plan is to produce the MR9 well from the M2A zone on an intermittent basis whenever there is available capacity in the production system.
The moored processing vessel FPSO Raroa is currently at full capacity from five Moki production wells.
Since the Moki wells came onstream in mid-August, the average combined rate has been almost 40,000 barrels of oil per day - above the previously stated 35,000 bopd throughput capacity of Raroa.
