I dont know if this is what was being alluded to with the...

I dont know if this is what was being alluded to with the Australian but this is online and industry related

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/projects-battle-to-meet-lng-demand/story-e6frg9ef-1225797126239


Projects battle to meet LNG demand
Peter Alford, Seoul From: The Australian November 13, 2009 12:00AM
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KOREA Gas Corp opens its Perth office this week, long after the Japanese and Chinese arrived. But it's another indication of the new-found importance of Australian projects to the world's biggest liquefied natural gas buyer.

Perth-based Woodside Petroleum, the main home-grown operator in Australia's burgeoning LNG industry, already operates a Seoul office and hopes to be doing a lot of new business with KOGAS.

South Korea is the world's second-largest LNG market and the state-owned KOGAS imports 95 per cent of the 27 million tonnes the country burns this year.

But until last month, the Koreans had not signed a long-term supply contract with an Australian project.

That changed last month when KOGAS signed heads-of-agreement for 1.5 million tonnes annually over 15 years from the Chevron-operated Gorgon project, which begins production in 2015.

Another Korean firm, GS Caltex, has signed up for 500,000tpa for up to 20 years, though only a part of that supply will come from Gorgon.



Until now, the most substantial Australian LNG supply agreement was a 500,000tpa seven-year contract with the Woodside-operated North West Shelf venture; it's called a mid-term contract in the business, although it has already been rolled over once.

There's a theory in the LNG industry that, until now, KOGAS has been uncomfortable about signing long-term deals with non-state companies and currently gets about half its requirements from the Middle East, where its main supplier is Qatar Petroleum.

KOGAS is also unusually reliant on the spot market, buying up to 15 per cent of its requirements there.

By 2015, the Koreans estimate they will need 35mt of LNG annually, an increase in demand of almost 30 per cent in six years, in a global market expected to tighten much faster than new supply grows.

This year alone, Australian LNG projects have finalised agreements covering almost 12 million tonnes, points out Graeme Bethune, chief executive of the EnergyQuest consultancy.

That's about 60 per cent of the country's current annual production, "a huge amount of gas to have been sold in just a few months". In part to reduce South Korea's geographic and market vulnerabilities, President Lee Myung-bak wants to build the share of Australian-sourced LNG to 20-30 per cent, from less than the 2 per cent the Shelf supplies now. "Twenty per cent of that market in 2015 is 7mt, 30 per cent is 10mt," says Sean Rodrigues, Woodside's chief representative in Seoul.

"Gorgon and the current North West Shelf contract is 2.5mt, so the South Koreans are signalling quite directly that they're in the market for another 5mt to 7mt."

But finding that extra volume, particularly for the build-up to 35mt total demand between now and 2015, will be no easy task, particularly from Australia.

North West Shelf's 16.3mtpa production is committed indefinitely, "the sold-out shingle is up", Rodrigues says.

Rodrigues points out, with some relish, the only significant new LNG production is Woodside's 90 per cent-owned Pluto project, with Stage 1, expected to come on-stream in early 2011 at the latest.

There's about 500,000tpa still unsold from Pluto's first LNG production train on the Burrup Peninsula, just south of the Shelf facilities, and Woodside expects strong interest from KOGAS.

But it's the proposed second stage, two identical trains each with designed capacity of 4.8mt, which Rodrigues expects to be the Koreans' main focus. Stage 2 has entered FEED (front-end engineering and design) and, with a final investment decision next year, could be in production by the end of 2013.

But nothing is ever as easy as build it and they will come. For a start, Woodside doesn't yet have sufficient reserves in its Pluto and Xena fields to feed Stage 2; it's going to need third-party supplies from smaller fields nearby, or to prove up more of its own reserves, or both.

Woodside has just made its best offer to nearby operators.

Chevron is also chasing third-party suppliers, and on a much larger scale. Chevron is seeking government permission to scale up Wheatstone from the approved 8mtpa to 25mtpa.

Chevron's own reserves in the area are believed to be only sufficient for the original production target.

However, Rodrigues radiates complete confidence that Pluto Stage 2 will be producing LNG, much of it for Korea, by 2014. Timing is the clincher. He said: "These markets are very time-sensitive ... if the Koreans say they need the gas in 2013-14, they've got to have it then."