The welding of 30km of gas pipeline for the billion-dollar offshore Taranaki Kupe gas project is to be done at Picton.
The Kupe project team announced today it had signed a formal agreement with Port of Marlborough to locate the project's spoolbase at Picton.
The 30cm diameter pipelinewould be delivered to the spoolbase in 12m sections that would then be welded together into three individual 10km lengths.
The lengths of pipe would then be reeled into the Apache pipelaying vessel and taken to South Taranaki for laying on the seabed.
The vessel was due to arrive in Taranaki in December, with the pipelaying expected to start in early 2008, the project team said.
It was the first time a subsea gas pipeline would be laid in that way in New Zealand.
The contract for all civil works, structural components and fabrication to be undertaken at the spoolbase had been awarded to McConnell Dowell Constructors.
Meanwhile, work had finished on two 2.2km tunnels, 400m of the length onshore, to take the pipeline and an umbilical cable providing utilities to the Kupe platform under the South Taranaki coastline.
The tunnels were the longest of their type -- horizontal directional drilling (HDD) with the pipe being pushed through from onshore -- ever completed, the project team said.
The drilling was accurate, with the tunnels' subsea exit points within 6m of target.
Project director Peter Ashford said the huge effort put into the planning and execution of the tunnelling had paid off.
The estimated $980 million Kupe gas project is expected to be finished by mid-2009.
Participants are Origin Energy, the operator with a 50 per cent shareholding, along with Genesis Energy with 31 per cent, New Zealand Oil & Gas with 15 per cent, and Mitsui E&P with 4 per cent.
