Three deepwater natural-gas discoveries off the western coast of Australia , announced this week by Chevron Corp. and Woodside Petroleum Ltd., could add momentum to the nation's emergence as a top exporter of the fuel.

Chevron said Monday its Acme well, about90 miles off of Western Australia state, encountered a net gas pay of 273 meters, making it "one of our most significant natural-gas discoveries in Australia." The pay zone is the producing formation in an oil or gas well.

Chevron's find was one of nine discoveries by the company in the area since August 2009 and twice the size of the company's next biggest discovery there.

Perth-based Woodside said the Larsen Deep-1 and Alaris-1 wells struck material amounts of gas. Larsen Deep-1 is owned in a joint venture with Hess Corp.

A projected surge in demand for cleaner-burning fuels from developing Asian economies is prompting energy companies to invest billions of dollars on exploration campaigns and large gas-export projects.

Chevron, the second-biggest U.S. oil company by market capitalization after Exxon Mobil Corp., is building two liquefied-natural-gas projects in Western Australia state: Gorgon and Wheatstone.

Australia 's stable political environment, substantial gas reserves and proximity to Asia make it an attractive place to invest, particularly with U.S. gas prices kept low by ballooning domestic supplies.

Gas found off of Western Australia would be piped to onshore LNG-processing facilities, compressed into liquid, then loaded onto tankers for export.

Chevron is investing so heavily in Australia that the country could be as big a profit driver for the company as its U.S. operations are now by 2020, former Chairman and Chief Executive David O'Reilly predicted in October.

Vice Chairman George Kirkland said at Chevron's most recent quarterly earnings briefing that the company already has enough gas to support four LNG production units, also known as trains, at Gorgon, located on an island nature reserve capable of accommodating five trains.

The Wheatstone site, at the town of Onslow on the Australian mainland, is big enough to accommodate six trains. Chevron said Monday that it expects the Acme discovery to help underpin a potential expansion of Wheatstone from a current two-train development.

Initially, Chevron and its Gorgon joint-venture partners, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Exxon, want to build three trains at Gorgon capable of producing 15 million metric tons of LNG a year for an estimated cost of 43 billion Australian dollars (US$38.59 billion).

Chevron also wants to build two trains at Wheatstone by 2016 and expects to approve that development in the second half of 2011.

The company said last month that Wheatstone will have a maximum annual production capacity of 25 million tons.

To support Wheatstone's foundation development, it has already agreed to buy third-party gas from Apache Corp. and Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co. to combine with its own discoveries. "We see Wheatstone as a hub," Mr. Kirkland said last month. "It's a hub to bring in our gas and other industry gas."

Chevron's plans for Wheatstone are attracting the attention of others, including BHP Billiton PLC, that have undeveloped discoveries in the area and are seeking cost-effective ways to bring their gas to market.

Chevron is competing for gas supplies with Woodside, which has big LNG ambitions of its own.

Woodside operates Australia's biggest operational LNG terminal, the North West Shelf, and wants to build another three LNG terminals: Pluto, Browse and Sunrise.

On Tuesday it said Larsen Deep-1 encountered 50 meters of gas over several intervals, its second gas discovery off the coast of Western Australia in as many days.

The discovery is smaller than a 185-meter continuous gas column Woodside encountered at the Alaris-1 well, reported Monday, but is much closer to the coast and within six miles of the previous Martell and Noblige discoveries.

Both recent discoveries firm up Woodside's chances of sanctioning an expansion of its Pluto LNG project to two trains by the end of 2010. If it develops the larger Alaris discovery, however, Woodside will have to build a 250-mile pipeline to an existing platform in the Pluto field.

Woodside wants to sanction a third train at Pluto by the end of 2011 and said its onshore site, near the North West Shelf terminal at Karratha, could accommodate five trains.

The 2010 final investment decision target for train two was notably absent from Woodside's second-quarter ouput report last month, after a few disappointing exploration results.

The company is expected to provide an update on the expansion when it posts its first-half results Wednesday.

E.L. & C. Baillieu director Ivor Ries said an initial analysis indicates the Noblige-Martell-Larsen structure has the potential to contain between 5.4 trillion and 6.8 trillion cubic feet of gas, more than enough to support a second LNG train at Pluto.

Διαβάστε ακόμα