LNG total hits $175bn with Ichthys: The next real test for Australia’s LNG sector will be the progress at Woodside’s closely watched Browse LNG venture, which is targeting a 12 million-tonnes-per-year plant at the controversial James Price Point site on the Kimberley coast.
As another greenfield project, planned for a remote, undeveloped site near Broome, Browse LNG faces technical, environmental and economic challenges that have already seen its schedule pushed back by several years.
Woodside, as the project operator, in December pushed back the targeted timing for a go-ahead at Browse to the first half of 2013 from mid-2012.
But the more the project slips in timing, the more it comes up against strengthening competition from rivals, analysts point out.
“[This year] is a massive year for Browse,” says Wood Mackenzie’s McMahon. “It needs basically to sink or swim at James Price Point, and the next 18 months will dictate what happens.”
WOODSIDE Petroleum's plans to build the $30 billion-plus Browse liquefied natural gas plant near Broome appear to have become less appealing against the alternative of piping the gas 1000km for processing at the North West Shelf plant near Karratha when reserves there run low.
After recent industry developments here and in the US, analysts now put a greater probability on the Browse project's offshore gas fields being turned into LNG at the North West Shelf and say this would give the project a greater value.
Oh lovely,caught in the act!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/bn-oakajee-port-builder-urged-to-buy-chinese/story-e6frg8zx-1226246855496
"The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union state president, Steve McCartney, said yesterday Mr Barnett should disclose the extent of China's involvement in providing goods and services to Oakajee. "Colin Barnett became the first premier in WA's history to sign a state development agreement which gave preference to Chinese fabricators over local fabricators to supply to the Oakajee project," Mr McCartney said."