Asia's fossil fuel industry readies to once again talk up carbon capture and storage (CCS) as the technology that lets us keep burning coal and gas, while still hitting our climate targets.
Australia is the one of the world's biggest producer of liquefied natural gas. The North West Shelf, Pluto, Gorgon, Wheatstone, Prelude and Ichthys LNG projects source their gas from the waters off WA.
Inpex’s Ichthys LNG project will cost $53 billion, $8 billion more than planned, and may not see substantial production until early next year in a blow to the Japanese operator that is waiting on the Darwin plant to more than double its cashflow.
Andrew Forrest is considering joining the world’s biggest LNG buyer to ship gas to NSW to alleviate the east coast gas shortage caused by soaring LNG exports from Queensland.
The Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG projects are now enjoying cash margins of more than $US30 a barrel at a $US50 price and production from the $111 billion mega-projects is expected to increase.
Buck-passing between oil giants over who pays for the upkeep of the ageing North West Shelf LNG plant has emerged as the biggest hurdle to Woodside sending its Browse gas to the facility.
The $US37 billion Ichthys LNG project is on track to start up next March as its two giant vessels moored about 200km off the Kimberley are readied for production.
Chevron chief executive John Watson says his company should have done more engineering and planning before it sanctioned the Gorgon LNG project in 2009.
