ConocoPhillips still saying Barossa/Caldita gas is for Darwin....

ConocoPhillips still saying Barossa/Caldita gas is for Darwin.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...-of-lng-projects/story-e6frg9df-1227299248345

US energy heavyweight ConocoPhillips has given an upbeat assessment of its Australian LNG projects despite the collapse in oil prices putting pressure on prices and clouding the demand outlook.
At an investor meeting this week, the company said its undeveloped Poseidon and Caldita-Barossa gas discoveries in the Browse Basin and Timor Sea respectively were providing attractive options for its existing Darwin LNG processing plant, part owned by ASX-listed Santos.
And at the $25 billion Australia Pacific LNG (APLNG) joint venture with Origin at Gladstone, work was near 90 per cent complete, with a start-up of the first processing train in the third quarter, and a start-up of the second train next year.
“Once that happens the APLNG joint venture will be self-funding from 2016 forward,’’ ConocoPhillips said.
The value of the project has come in to sharp focus this week with Shell’s $91bn takeover bid for Britain’s BG. BG is already exporting from its competing LNG project on Gladstone’s Curtis Island. The Shell bid exploits the distressed market value of BG in the wake of the oil price collapse and has raised the prospect that Origin too could be vulnerable to a bid from one of the world’s oil super majors.
At the meeting, ConocoPhillips said it had spent the past few years doing a lot of appraisal work across the Poseidon (a joint venture with Origin) and the Caldita-Barossa fields. “We’re particularly pleased with the appraisal results,’’ the company said.
It said the results had delivered “attractive options to backfill’’ the Darwin plant, which relies on gas from the depleting Bayu-Undan field, requiring the partners to secure new long-term supplies.
Meanwhile, a third LNG export project being built at Gladstone, the Santos-led Gladstone LNG project (GLNG), is also moving towards first production.
Engineering group Bechtel — the builder of all of the Gladstone projects — said yesterday the GLNG project was now being “powered up’’ following the successful start of its first gas turbine generator.

Bechtel said that 2015 was a critical year for the Curtis Island construction projects with all three sites producing LNG, including start-up of BG’s second processing train. The six trains being built across the three projects would produce about 25 million tonnes of LNG annually when completed next year.
The projects are changing the dynamics of the domestic gas market, which in the eastern states has always had a domestic focus. Through the LNG projects, the domestic market is now plugged in to the broader Asian market, raising concerns about domestic supplies.