Photo by: Bloomberg
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Construction of the A$10-billion Ichthys liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, offshore Western Australia, was some 81% complete, and the project was on track for first LNG production in the third quarter of 2017.
Energy major Inpex Corporation’s project manager for the Ichthys project, Louis Bon, told delegates at the eighteenth LNG conference, in Perth, that the operator has finished laying a 42-inch subsea gas export pipeline and infield pipelay, while starting drilling at its planned production wells.
Over the past year, the central processing facility was floated out of dry docks in Korea, while the floating production, storage and offloading facility was also taking shape.
“Both of these offshore facilities are set to be ready for sail away later this year, making the journey of 5 600 nautical miles from Korea to Australia,” Bon said.
The start date of the Ichthys project was in 2015 pushed back from December 2016 to the third quarter of 2017, as the company worked to increase the anticipated production capacity from the originally planned 8.4-million tonnes a year to 8.9-million tonnes a year.
The Ichthys project would lift LNG from offshore Western Australia, which would then be transported to an onshore plant in the Northern Territory to produce some 8.9-million tonnes of LNG and 1.6-million tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas a year, along with some 100 000 barrels of condensate a day.
Bon said that Inpex had faced a number of challenges in constructing the project, including durability requirements to meet a 40-year project mine life and strict environmental laws and regulations in the region.
“It’s not that the rules and regulations are tougher than they might be elsewhere. It’s that there is a lot of public interest in how our project proponents are going to manage the environment, and particularly when we are uniquely working on the doorstep of a capital city,” Bon said.
He told delegates that the company’s solution was to recruit some of the industry’s finest expertise to work on the project.
“When completed, the Ichthys LNG project will be a success story, not only for Inpex and its joint venture partners, but also for Australia, Japan and the global LNG industry.”
The project is jointly owned by Inpex, Total, CPC Corporation Taiwan, Tokyo Gas, Osaka Gas, Kansai Electric, Chubu Electric Power and Toho Gas.