Poll shows most oppose fracking - The West Australian
What's more, only 7 per cent of
respondents strongly supported fracking, compared with 26 per cent who strongly
objected to it. The results were contained in polling conducted by East
Perth-based consultancy Research Solutions, which carried out the work on
behalf of the Department of Mines and Petroleum. The weighted sample for the
question was 237 respondents. It comes at a delicate time for the Government
amid increasing activity by onshore gas companies, which use fracking to unlock
unconventional gas resources.
Last week Environment Minister
Albert Jacob upset green groups when he overruled their concerns and approved a
fracking proposal by Buru Energy in the Kimberley. Buru wants to explore for
tight gas in the Canning Basin, which is thought to hold some of the world's
biggest onshore gas reserves and shapes as a key battleground in the fight over
fracking.
A separate question posed by
Research Solutions found opposition to fracking in the Canning Basin was even
stronger than the State average. The department's deputy director general
Michelle Andrews said the main finding of the research was that the community
was not properly informed about fracking or the industry. She said the
department was reforming its petroleum regulations to “provide more robust and
transparent” oversight of the sector.
Photo Damian Kelly
Posts
Noonkanbah backs fracking plan
ReplyDelete"The fight culminated in the then-WA Liberal premier Charles Court sending a 45-strong convoy of non-union drilling rigs and trucks from Perth to force through a picket line at Noonkanbah.
All along the way it was met by protesters.
In the end, Amax got its way - but no oil was found.
Buru managing director Keiran Wulff said securing the support of the community that had so famously opposed an energy project more than 30 years ago was all about listening carefully to concerns, respecting the cultural heritage of the land and providing jobs.
“For a very early stage program, what we didn’t want to do was start off on the wrong foot,” Dr Wulff told AAP.
“You can’t do this just only being interested in the exploitation of resources - you really do have to have a passion for doing something for the community up there as well.”"
No surprise there.
As so many BlackFellas were laughing about at the time "No money on the table.You wanna talk to BlackFellas there better be some money on the table or otherwise he won't talk to you"
Their attitude to JPP proved that.This seals it.
Don't blame them but - they've got less than most folks.
BUT can't help thinking they will live to regret letting Buru onto their land.
BUT then again they didn't give a shit about all the cancer cases from the "Worlds biggest gas plant"
The trouble with all the high cost fracking going on is that in the Canning Basin they can only make money by selling to WA customers at the price the Japanese pay for LNG - about $15 to $18 per 1000 cuft.
ReplyDeleteOver in the East they are getting ready for the crunch because with the high export price companies can pay more to source gas so domestic customers wind up paying more as well.
All this is backed by APPEA who are running a relentless campaign against any gas reservation laws which would deny gas producers from cashing in on this high price.
"We will only drill if the high price is there - otherwise we won't drill and shortages will push the price up anyway."
The big question is with all the gas coming on stream in the future will the price remain high?
Everyone it seems has gas of one sort or another and wants to develop it.
Asian countries paying these high prices are willing to spend up big in undeveloped countries to get supplies out cheaper and break the stranglehold.
Make no mistake about it Buru are playing a very big gamble and the State government has shown it is willing to turn a blind eye to them cutting corners to keep their costs down.
We will pay a very high price if the gas price does go down as Buru will have to run a very dirty operation or go broke - and the government knows this.
It will be too late to do anything when the wells are in and the leaks start and Buru have no money for the maintenance or clean ups.
The other projects advance.
ReplyDelete..
Santos looks for supply deals
Paul Garvey - The Australian |
23 Jun, 1:43 AM
DataRoom |
Industries |
Resources and Energy
Santos has started talks with ConocoPhillips and Inpex over the potential to supply the pair’s Northern Territory liquefied natural gas plants with gas from its low-profile Browse Basin discoveries.
Santos is currently drilling its Lasseter-1 well in the Browse Basin, north of Broome in Western Australia, and is confident the well could add to its resource position in the region.
Lasseter sits in the same permit as the Crown gasfield, Santos’s largest discovery, with the well set to reach its target next month.
Santos general manager for Western Australia and the Northern Territory, Brett Woods, told The Australian that the group was already in discussions with ConocoPhillips and Inpex over the potential to pipe gas from its Browse Basin permits to their LNG facilities.
“Those conversations are in play at the moment,” Mr Woods said.
Crown and Lasseter are sandwiched between the ConocoPhillips-led Poseidon gas discovery and the Inpex-led Ichthys gasfield, leaving them well placed to be incorporated into either development. Inpex also holds a 20 per cent interest in the Crown and Lasseter permits.
ConocoPhillips operates the Darwin LNG plant, in which Santos holds an 11.5 per cent stake, and has said it is open to gas supply deals with third parties as it looks to top up supplies into the plant and potentially underpin a doubling of capacity.
Inpex is leading the construction of the Ichthys LNG plant near Darwin, and also has the capacity to expand the facility.
Mr Woods said there was an understanding between the various Browse Basin explorers that collaboration was a more sensible approach than each party going alone.
Aligning Santos’s discoveries with others in the region, such as the ConocoPhillips-led Poseidon find next to Crown, would bring scale to any development and help speed up the appraisal process.
“If you combine together our gas, ConocoPhillips’s, and other parties in that region, you can run all that back to Darwin and do something jointly. That’s a much more mature approach,” he said.
The inability to collaborate has seen clusters of LNG plants developed in Western Australia’s Carnarvon basin — where the North West Shelf, Pluto, Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG plants have either been built or are under construction — and Queensland, where three LNG plants are being built at the same time.
Mr Woods said those experiences, which had driven up construction costs and led to inefficiencies, meant the likes of ConocoPhillips and Ichthys were open to discussions.
“We need to learn from some of the mistakes that were made in Queensland and the Carnarvon Basin about the lack of collaboration, and use that learning here as a good leverage point to get people to talk,” he said.
Santos last week announced it was also weighing up the Darwin LNG plants as a possible destination for gas from the Petrel, Tern and Frigate gasfields off the NT coast.
Santos looks for supply deals
ReplyDeleteJoint venture partner GDF Suez and Santos on Thursday scrapped plans to develop those fields through floating LNG technology after finding the proposal was uneconomic.
The Lasseter target could be of similar magnitude to Crown, which is understood to be a multi-trillion-cubic feet discovery.
Santos and ConocoPhillips are also currently drilling at their Barossa discovery northwest of Darwin that has also been earmarked for the Darwin LNG plant.
The Bayu-Undan gasfield, which supplies gas into Darwin, is expected to begin declining early next decade. The Darwin LNG partners also have approvals in place for a second train, or processing line, at the project.
The ConocoPhillips-led Poseidon discovery has also been touted as a potential source of gas for Darwin. Origin Energy this month struck a $US800 million ($852m) deal to buy a 40 per cent stake in Poseidon from Karoon Gas.
Despite the remoteness of the Browse Basin, Mr Woods said he had “no doubt” that Santos’s gas there would find a market.
“The reservoirs up in the Browse are world class, the resource sizes are giant. For us, it’s just about proving up the resource size and understanding the opportunity at the infrastructure points to get that timing just right,” he said.
“The Browse is a significant part of Santos’s growth aspirations. We’ve invested a lot of money in the Browse and we will continue to invest a lot of money in the Browse to bring this gas to market as soon as we can.”
The market has paid little attention to date to Santos’s position in the Browse and its producing assets in WA, with investor focus instead on its Gladstone and Papua New Guinea LNG developments and its mainstay production base in South Australia’s Cooper Basin.
Mr Woods said Santos’s WA asset base represented an important if little-noticed source of cash and growth.
“The development of Gladstone LNG has certainly been very much in the forefront of the market’s view of Santos. Behind the scenes, the WA business unit has been delivering significant cashflows and growing production and the growth story for the company,” he said.
Inpex: Ichthys LNG Project 50 Pct Complete
ReplyDeletePosted on Jun 25th, 2014
Inpex said that the Ichthys LNG project has today celebrated its most significant construction milestone to date after officially marking 50 percent completion.
Likened to three mega-projects in one, Ichthys includes an offshore project with subsea facilities and two large floating platforms (central processing facility and floating production storage and offloading facility); an onshore project featuring an 8.4 million tonne per annum LNG plant in Darwin; and an 889 km 42-inch gas transmission pipeline.
Today’s milestone means that half of the overall project scope has been completed. Inpex President Director Australia Seiya Ito said millions of man-hours by thousands of people across the globe had contributed to the Project reaching its halfway mark, which comes less than two-and-a-half years after the final investment decision was made in January 2012.
“Achieving 50 percent means overall we have completed half of the Project’s physical fabrication and construction work,” Ito said.
“For INPEX, this is a major step towards the successful start-up of our flagship Ichthys LNG Project, which with an operational life of at least 40 years, is integral to realising our medium to long-term vision for growth,” adds Ito.
Managing Director Ichthys LNG Project Louis Bon said reaching the milestone was a testament to the enormous effort and dedication of everyone involved.
“Building one of the world’s largest and most exciting resource development projects certainly has its challenges, but we have every confidence in our people and our contractors to deliver Ichthys as planned,” Bon said.
“I would like to personally thank our Project teams and the many contractors and subcontractors involved up to now, and acknowledge the continuing support of our joint venture participants, governments and the communities in which we operate,” he added.
“With first production a little more than two years away, our Operations team is working hard to prepare for start-up and commissioning, and we remain absolutely focused on successfully delivering the second half of this world-class project,” concludes Bon.
With a 40 plus year life span, the Ichthys LNG project offers a multi-generational economic opportunity.
Approximately AU$10 billion has been committed to be spent in Australia during the construction phase of the project, including more than AU$5 billion in the Northern Territory and approximately AU$3.5 billion in Western Australia.
In reaching 50 per cent completion the Ichthys LNG Project has celebrated significant milestones, some of which include:
◾Financial Investment Decision, January 2012;
◾Start of construction, April 2012;
◾Completion of the world’s largest project financing, December 2012;
◾Start of offshore fabrication, January 2013;
◾Keel laying for the Floating Production, Storage and Offloading Facility, February 2014;
◾Hull block assembly for the Central Processing Facility, April 2014.
Press Release, June 25, 2014; Image: Inpex
Ichthys pipe-lay underway
ReplyDeleteWednesday, 25 June 2014
SAIPEM’s Semac 1 semi-submersible pipelay barge has arrived at the Darwin outer port limits to begin work on the shallow water pipelay component of the INPEX-led Ichthys project.
The Semac 1 preparing to start the lay of the offshore pipeline for the PNG LNG Project.
The 188m-long vessel is scheduled to begin laying the 164km shallow water component of the 882km pipeline to the Ichthys field in the next few weeks.
The pipeline will deliver gas and some condensate from the Ichthys offshore central processing facility to the onshore facilities at Bladin Point near Darwin for further processing, with 18km of the shallow pipeline to run through Darwin Harbour itself.
Semac 1 will work from east to west in the Harbour, feeding the pipe to the project’s landfall site for a 3km shore-pull, enabling it to connect the offshore component to the onshore component, which will run about 7km from the beach valve at Middle Arm to Bladin Point.
About 11 support vessels will be working 24 hours per day alongside Semac 1, with helicopters used to transfer personnel to the vessel.
The Darwin Harbour element of the work will take about four weeks, with the total pipe laying expected to take around 80 days.
Semac 1 will then transfer duties to Saipem’s deep water installation vessel Castorone, which will lay the remaining 718km of pipe to the field.
Saipem is the engineering, procurement, construction and installation contractor for the project, winning the pipeline contract back in January, 2012.
Russian pipelines to impact Asia, Europe energy flows
ReplyDeleteNoel Dyson
Wednesday, 25 June 2014
RUSSIA plans to build almost 21,000km of pipelines through to 2018, which will have a substantial impact on natural gas flows into Europe and crude oil and natural gas flows into
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US LNG exports from 2016 will have impact on the Asia-Pacific market
The US Department of Energy must grant LNG export licences (pursuant to the Natural Gas Act) to exporters who are delivering LNG to countries with which the US has a free trade agreement (FTA) without modification or delay.
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U.S. House Urges LNG Exports Support
The House of Representatives on Tuesday kicked off debate on H.R. 6, the Domestic Prosperity and Global Freedom Act.
The legislation is a commonsense, bipartisan solution to expedite the export of U.S. natural gas to our allies by eliminating red tape and forcing the Department of Energy to issue timely approvals. By increasing the export of natural gas, the U.S. could create hundreds of thousands of jobs and improve U.S. trade balance while reducing U.S. allies’ dependence on hostile exporters like Russia.
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Japan and majors may help Indonesia become second CSG-to-LNG producer
Wednesday, 25 June 2014
With the world's first coal-seam-gas-to-LNG plant scheduled to come on stream in the fourth quarter of 2014 in Australia, the Asia-Pacific country with untapped CSG reserves, Indonesia, has already discussed future LNG ventures with energy majors and most recently Japan.
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Canada LNG Export Potential to Be Discussed at Conference
ReplyDeleteThe race for Canada to join the world leading LNG exporters continues, with recent news that Woodfibre LNG aims to now build its proposed LNG plant onshore. These developments come at the same time as Pieridae Energy awards CB&I the FEED contract for the Goldboro LNG facility in Nova Scotia.
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Along with the many aspects of Canadian LNG exports, the projects cannot move forward without consultation and inclusion of the aboriginal communities. Local government are saying all parties are being included and yet some First Nations officials still have significant environmental concerns. Ellis Ross, Chief Councillor, from Haisla First Nation returns to share his insights at the event focusing on Striking Meaningful Partnerships with the Aboriginal Communities, Businesses and the Government to Promote Economic Prosperity.
Many are also asking about the gap in the market for “local talent” and how this will be fulfilled. Undoubtedly Canada will have to import labour to complete the projects, but immigration can be a slow and arduous process. Dave Byng, Deputy Minister – Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training and Minister Responsible for Labour in BC, gives a keynote presentation on what the BC government’s plans are to manage this.
Manley McLachlan, BC Construction Association; Jim Sinclair, BC Federation of Labour and Paul de Jong, Progressive Contractors Association of Canada will discuss the human resources issue further Gaining Access to a Skilled Workforce to Meet the Growing Demand in Western Canada.
Press Release, June 25, 2014
East Africa Must Tackle Challenges to Become an Export Hub
ReplyDeleteby Robin Dupre
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Rigzone Staff
|
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
East Africa is one of the fastest-growing economies, and with the region’s natural resources, including discoveries in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda, its prospects and potential for further gas finds keep the oil and gas industry optimistically positive about the country’s development.
Many are speculating that East Africa is on the path of becoming an export hub of oil and natural gas by 2020, according to a report by Evaluate Energy.
Recent developments in the exploration and production industry in three key countries, including Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania, have laid a possible foundation for one or a couple of these countries to become an exporter of its resources in the next decade, noted Evaluate Energy. And if this region accomplishes this goal, the impact on the global oil and gas industry will be significant. The attractiveness of investing in Africa represents an opportunity for exploration and production (E&P) companies to take big risks with great returns, the company noted.
Rigzone sat down with John Sisa, lead upstream analyst for Sub Saharan Africa with GlobalData
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Rigzone: Tanzania is on the path of becoming a major gas provider. Can you please discuss where this country is heading and what makes this area very attractive?
Sisa: Tanzania is headed to be one of the major gas exporters of natural gas if the recently discovered gas reserves are optimally exploited. What makes it most attractive is its proximity to the Asian market. Natural gas is in very high demand in the Eastern Hemisphere and with Tanzania and Mozambique being close to the Asian market, it makes it all the more attractive, mainly because of the reduction in transportation cost.
The quality of the gas found is pretty remarkable, so it might be cheaper for the Asian market to seek natural gas within that region instead of their own.
Also, the willingness of the government to work with international companies is very attractive, as well. They have various attractive fiscal terms, as compared to other regions.
Rigzone: When these resources come online, how will this affect and/or shift the global market?
Sisa: The United States is becoming more energy independent and is developing its nonconventional natural resources and therefore the U.S. market is closing down. The only markets left with such high demand are the Asian and African markets.
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Rigzone: Can you discuss China and India’s role in East Africa, in terms of exploiting or producing the natural resources?
Sisa: Most of the companies interested in tapping the East Africa reserves are state-controlled, [similar to the Indian-state controlled] Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation Ltd. These government-controlled companies are interacting with the host government on a different level and have a special relationship, a more diplomatic relationship.
East Africa is a bit short in terms of infrastructure, and for that reason, the host governments are working with these state-controlled companies on a diplomatic level with the aim of boosting infrastructure development. I believe that the state-controlled companies from Asia have an upper hand in terms of tapping these resources as compared to other international oil companies because of their willingness to build, create and help the host countries.
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