John Sanders is definitely an interesting higher, considering the negotiations he has been involved in the past, with Woodside Energy and Hess Exploration Australia.
3 projects that he was involved were huge LNG projects, although 3 ultimately were cancelled for other reasons. Maybe he got frustrated, and saw that the real demand was in renewables and energy storage. The beginning of the end IMO. Nonetheless, he was on the team that negotiated multi-billion dollar deals, with huge multinational oil companies, internationally. Something big is going down, or no point in hiring, since he won't come cheap. AT even mentions in the release that he was brought to manage complex negotiations and joint ventures. Multiple players must be at the table. ARG gov't, a battery maker/car company?, etc. ALL IMO
But look at these projects
1) Equus LNG project Hess writes down Equus development off Western Australia
MELBOURNE, Jan. 26
01/26/2017 By Rick Wilkinson
OGJ Correspondent
US company Hess Corp. has decided to write down the full value of the proposed Equus gas-condensate development off Western Australia by $933 million (Aus.). The project has come off the boil because of the downturn in world oil prices and the high capital costs of development in Australia.
Hess will now focus its global attention to the Bakken shale in the US, Valhall field offshore Norway, and Liza field offshore Guyana.
This means that Hess’ partner in Equus, Woodside Petroleum Ltd., will have to find its own way to move forward with the discovery. The two companies had made an arrangement in April last year to begin a front-end engineering and design phase looking at the technical possibilities of tying in the discoveries to the Woodside-led North West Shelf gas project. Woodside had begun the engineering studies with the aim of arriving at a final investment decision for the project sometime this year.
Sixteen wells have been drilled on Equus since 2010, which resulted in 14 gas successes in eight fields across three permits: WA-70-P, WA-390-P, and WA-474-P. An estimated $6-billion investment was envisaged to bring the project to fruition and it would have been the first time that the NWS joint venture had processed gas from a third party.
The broad plan was development of the eight fields via a central semisubmersible gas processing facility at the hub of a subsea gathering system. The gas would then be piped to the NWS offshore facilities for transmission to the shore plant at Karratha on the Burrup Peninsula to supply the five NWS gas trains at optimum level for the next decade.
The eight Equus group fields are Mentorc, Bravo, and Nimblefoot with Cretaceous-age reservoirs; Chester and Rimfire with Cretaceous-Triassic reservoirs; Glenloth and Briseals in Triassic sands; and the Glencoe discovery in the Jurassic. The fields lie in 1,000-1,200 m of water and are 300 km west of the NWS gas plant on the Burrup.
In total the fields are thought to have recoverable reserves of 2-3 tcf of gas. The three Cretaceous fields have the highest condensate-gas ratio of 40 bbl/MMcf.
However the Hess 2017 budget has no room for the Equus plans.
Analysts have suggested that Woodside’s purchase of 25% interest in Scarborough gas field on the Exmouth Plateau from BHP Billiton Ltd. late last year could have been a complicating factor.
Woodside has since flagged the beginning of FEED in 2018 leading to a final investment decision for the Scarborough development by 2020. The company said it had started work with the Scarborough JV led by ExxonMobil Corp. with the aim of commercializing the gas resource that lies 220 km northwest of Exmouth in 900 m of water. Scarborough was discovered in 1979.
Development options for Scarborough include a floating LNG facility and a tieback to an existing onshore LNG facility.
2) Sunrise LNG project https://www.forbes.com/sites/damonevans/2016/12/12/east-timors-gas-dream-is-doomed/#3ac72106f43d
The government of East Timor and international oil companies, including ConocoPhillips and Woodside Energy, are responsible for failing to progress the development of the Greater Sunrise gas fields, in the Timor Sea.
Greater Sunrise’s gas reserves are potentially worth more than $8 billion to the southeast Asian nation, which is almost entirely dependent on petroleum revenue from its only producing fields at the Bayu-Undan project in the Timor Sea.
But as I wrote recently, without new sources of income East Timor could be bankrupt within a decade unless it takes urgent action to diversify its economy and reassess its fixation with mega-petroleum projects, including its desire to wrestle control of the stalled Greater Sunrise project.
Revenue from any potential development of Greater Sunrise will be crucial for East Timor as production at ConocoPhillips-operated Bayu-Undan is expected to stop sometime between 2020 and 2022. To make matters worse the government continues to spend at unsustainable levels and has made no serious effort to diversify its economy yet.
Complicating matters further, Xanana Gusmão, the former prime minister and president, who remains the de facto powerbroker in government, has waged a war of words over maritime boundaries with Australia. The former resistance leader has channelled the government’s limited resources towards lobbying for maritime boundaries that would give East Timor control of the Greater Sunrise fields.
Greater Sunrise holds an estimated 5 trillion cubic feet of gas, which could be worth as much as $8.5 billion – income East Timor sorely needs. But to realize that revenue the gas needs to be extracted, cooled, and shipped to overseas buyers as liquefied natural gas (LNG), which requires billions of dollars of investment from energy companies willing to invest cash and expertise into the fledgling nation.
Royal Dutch Shell PLC has cancelled a $4.6-billion contract with South Korean shipbuilder Samsung Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. for three floating LNG vessels.
The vessels, ordered in June 2015, were earmarked for development of the Browse gas-condensate fields offshore the Kimberley coast of Western Australia for the Woodside Petroleum Ltd.-led consortium.
However, the Browse FLNG project was postponed indefinitely in March this year because of the poor prevailing economic and market environment (OGJ Online, Mar. 24, 2016).
Up to three FLNG facilities measuring 488-m-long and 78-m-wide were planned for Browse, each capable of producing 3.9 million tonnes/year of LNG and 17,000-22,000 b/d of condensate. Another scenario envisaged two FLNG vessels with one moved around to different locations on the three targeted fields.
The three fields in question—Brecknock, Torosa, and Calliance—are 425-km north of Broome and estimated to contain gross contingent resources of 15.4 tcf of dry gas and 453 million bbl of condensate.
The FLNG vessels were to be based on Shell technology that is being pioneered for the nearby $6-billion, 3.6 million-tpy Prelude project. The Prelude FLNG vessel is due for completion later this year.
Woodside holds a 30.6 percent participating interest in the Browse resources, amounting to 2C share of 4.9 trillion cubic feet of dry gas and 142.6 million barrels of condensate. Shell holds 27 percent stake in the project, while BP, Japan Australia LNG and PetroChina hold interest of 17.33 percent, 14.4 percent and 10.67 percent, respectively.
GXY Price at posting:
$1.93 Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
