upstream journal article., page-13

Taps primed at Sengkang LNG

By Amanda Battersby


Australia's Energy World Corporation is on target to bring the Sengkang liquefied natural gas project in Indonesia on stream next year at a cost of $350 million for the first 2 million tonnes per annum capacity.


"We are aiming to have the first 500,000 tpa unit up by the end of 2009," said EWC managing director Stewart Elliott.

The grassroots Sengkang LNG project on the island of Sulawesi will ultimately be a 5 million tpa project.

The Sengkang liquefaction project will use Siemens' all-electric technology, which the German contractor claims gives full load operations continuously for five to six years without requiring scheduled inspections and maintenance. This can mean up to 25 more days' production annually, according to Siemens LNG, Oil & Gas sales director Erik Four.

The trains are being built by Chart Energy & Chemicals and they will be skid-mounted and moved to the construction site.

Arup Energy will supply storage, loading, maritime and civil engineering services for the project, which will include the jetty and development of the contractor's all concrete LNG storage tank with an 80,000 cubic metre capacity.

The tank will be built by Hong Kong-based Slipform Engineering within the next 24 months.

Current resources at Sengkang are 583 billion cubic feet of gas, however EWC believes it is sitting on between 5 trillion and 7 trillion cubic feet of reserves that could sustain production of between 5 million and 7 million tpa of LNG for 20 years.

EWC, which holds a 100% operating stake in the onshore Sengkang production sharing contract, already supplies gas from the block to its 135-megawatt power plant that sells electricity to Indonesia's state-owned Perusahaan Listrik Negara. The power plant is being expanded to 195 MW and another 60 MW of capacity will be added once the LNG project comes into operation.

EWC, Siemens, Chart, Slipform and Arup believe that their concept of developing liquefaction projects with a series of "smaller" modular units offers an economic and timely approach to unlocking stranded gas reserves.

The skid-mounted equipment is suitable for installation on floaters or barges and could be re-used at another location, making it suitable for fields with marginal reserves.

Hong Kong-based EWC has ambitious plans to bring 50 million tpa of LNG to the Asia market in a five-year period is looking at gas fields in the Middle East, Australia and Libya as potential LNG candidates.




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12 March 2008 09:16 GMT | last updated: 12 March 2008 09:16 GMT