Australia approves gas megaproject

In order to understand energy geopolitics in Asia, even in East Asia, it is no longer adequate to look westward to Central and Southwest Asia across the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa. A new, massive liquefied natural gas (LNG) development in Australia has just passed an important environmental hurdle, and China, India and Japan are lined up to be customers.
The Gorgon project on Wednesday received Australian government environmental approval to proceed. The development, comprising three production trains and a domestic gas plant, is projected to create 6,000 jobs during peak construction plus 4,000 more in indirect employment.

It is one of as many as 10 LNG projects under development in

Australia. Two more are planned in Papua New Guinea, and one in Indonesia. About 130 to 200 kilometers off the northwest coast of Western Australia, Gorgon’s component fields are estimated to contain up to 1.1 trillion cubic meters with an estimated life of 40 years.

According to the Financial Times, PetroChina agreed last month to purchase US$41 billion worth of LNG from the Gorgon development over the next 20 years. India’s Petronet is in the game already, for $21 billion. Natural gas accounted respectively for only 3% and 8% of the two countries’ primary energy consumption in 2006, the last year for which reliable statistics are available.

Another major LNG field under development in Western Australia is the Browse project, estimated to be half the size of Gorgon. Three more (Greater Sunrise, Scarborough and Pluto, all but the first likewise in Western Australia) are together as big as Browse. Browse’s expected startup is during the first years of the next decade. The others are still in the planning stage.

Asia Times