Shell, Inpex Near Finish Line in Race to Export North Australian LNG

Shell, Inpex Near Finish Line in Race to Export North Australian LNG
Shell and Inpex are on the final stretch of a years-long race to export gas from offshore northern Australia, where both have spent billions of dollars building the world's biggest maritime vessels to grab a slice of Asia's booming LNG market.

"There is no change to the schedule that we announced in March," Inpex spokesman Carlo Niederberger told Reuters.

Although both projects feed from the Browse Basin, Inpex said it was not yet certain whether there would be direct competition for gas between the two fields.

EXPENSIVE & LATE

Prelude - which will produce, process and export LNG - came at a cost of more than $13 billion, several years late and billions of dollars over initial estimates.

Prelude is expected to have an annual LNG production capacity of 3.6 million tonnes, making it the smallest but most challenging Australian LNG project in recent years.

Ichthys will send gas onshore to Darwin through an 890-km (550 mile) pipeline, where it will be processed into LNG for export. Once completed, the $40 billion project will have an annual LNG capacity estimated at nearly 9 million tonnes.

Both Prelude and Ichthys will also produce condensate, an ultra-light form of crude oil, as well as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

Exports from new LNG projects including Ichthys and Prelude are expected to help Australia overtake Qatar to become the world's largest LNG exporter by the end of the decade.

(Reporting by Henning Gloystein, Jessica Jaganathan in SINGAPORE, Osamu Tsukimori and Aaron Sheldrick in TOKYO; writing by Henning Gloystein; editing by Richard Pullin)


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Mark  |  April 26, 2018
Worth noting that INPEX acquired a 17.5% stake in Prelude back in 2012 so INPEX will benefit either way.


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