the elephant in the room

Interesting to note yet another Santos PR spin media story below.  every news article keeps calling out the elephant in the room as an issue (i.e. very high co2) but no way round this elephant.

also this article's stated co2 is incorrect - i.e. co2 is even higher from barossa-3 being 18%...

Adl

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Barossa appraisal drilling success sparks likelihood of new train for Darwin LNG
27 February 2015 00:00 GMT
THE option of building a new liquefied natural gas train at the Darwin LNG site in northern Australia is on the cards due to ongoing appraisal drilling success at ConocoPhillips’ Barossa field, writes Russell Searancke.
The co-owners of the Caldita-Barossa resource are currently drilling the last of three planned appraisal wells.
The first two wells were successful, and co-owner Santos’ latest guidance is that drilling has “confirmed a much larger and better quality resource than that originally anticipated”.
The Barossa-2 well was drilled in the core of the field and hit 88 metres of net pay across a 217-metre gross interval.
The Barossa-3 well appraised potential upside to the north and hit 104 metres of net pay across a 152-metre interval.
Barossa-4 is in progress, using the semi-submersible drilling rig Nanhai VI.
Santos chief executive David Knox said Barossa is a very exciting resource, but would not be drawn on which of the two LNG options are favoured. The two options are for the field to supply gas for either backfill at the existing train at Darwin LNG or a new LNG train at the Darwin LNG facility.
”The Barossa resource is ideal for use as backfill or, if the size is there, for a second train at Darwin,” said Knox. “All of this is under discussion by the joint venture... but it is still early days.”
Santos added that concept evaluation and pre-front end engineering studies are progressing in parallel with the drilling programme “to position the resource for development”.
Sources said the appraisal success had lifted the field up the pecking order, perhaps ahead of ConocoPhillips’ Poseidon resource in the Browse basin.
There has been no news on Poseidon since last August when Origin Energy paid $600 million in cash for Karoon Gas’ interest.
ConocoPhillips has previously indicated that it would be reasonable to suggest that both Poseidon and Caldita-Barossa would be developed into Darwin LNG.
ConocoPhillips also said recently that there will be spare capacity in the existing Darwin train in the mid 2020s, and that Darwin LNG could be available to other resource owners too.
The Barossa field in Block NT/P69 was discovered in 2007, and was already seen as a big resource prior to the three-well appraisal campaign. However, like many of the gas fields in the Bonaparte basin, it has a high carbon dioxide content, in this case up to 16%.
Water depths at the location are between 200 metres and 320 metres.
South Korean conglomerate SK Energy in 2012 farmed in to Block NT/P69 and the adjacent NT/P61, which contains the Caldita discovery.
As part of the farm-in, SK Energy will fund up to US$520 million in appraisal drilling, pre-front end engineering and design, FEED and milestone payments.
The joint venture split for both permits is operator ConocoPhillips on 37.5%, SK Energy on 37.5% and Santos on 25%.