Page 9 - AsianOil Week 44
P. 9
AsianOil OCEANIA AsianOil
law firm, but the funding has yet to be released and a tender for appointing a law firm has yet to be completed.
If the commission is unable to provide an update by the end of November, then it is expected to announce in December that the inquiry will be held in early 2020.
Marape, who was finance minister when the government bought 10% of Oil Search in 2014, has promised to resign if the inquiry finds him guilty of improper conduct. The government eventually sold the stake at an estimated loss of $420mn owing to the com- modity price slump.
Marape became prime minister in May, after taking over from Peter O’Neill, and promptly launched the inquiry. PNG’s purchase of the Oil Search stake helped the company fund its entry into the giant Elk-Antelope development, which will underpin the two-train Papua LNG project.
The current administration remains frus- trated over the natural gas agreement signed between O’Neill’s government and Total on the Papua LNG project. Petroleum Minister Kerenga Kua has set his sights on ExxonMobil’s as-yet to-be-agreed-upon P’nyang project, say- ing that he is looking for “far better” terms than were agreed for Papua LNG.
McDermott wins refinery work in northern Australia
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
MCDERMOTT International has signed an agreement with Darwin Clean Fuels to provide engineering services for a proposed condensate refinery in northern Australia.
McDermott said on October 30 that it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to conduct a feasibility study, technology, front- end engineering design (FEED) and engineer- ing procurement and construction (EPC) for the refinery in Darwin, Northern Territory.
Under the terms of the initial agreement, McDermott will undertake the feasibility study and FEED through to a final investment decision (FID). Once the project has been greenlit, McDer- mott said it would lead the EPC work. Initial engi- neering work will commence immediately and be completed by the first quarter of 2020.
“The refinery would leverage our pro- prietary technologies, including alkylation and sulphur recovery, and is evidence of McDermott’s technology-led EPC capabili- ties,” McDermott’s senior vice-president of Asia-Pacific, Ian Prescott, said.
As a major producer of condensate, Australia is forecast to export 260,000 barrels per day of the fuel by 2020, with that figure expanding to 305,000 bpd by 2030. A considerable portion of that growth will come from the Inpex-led Ich- thys LNG project, which is located about 220km offshore Western Australia.
Gas and condensate from the offshore field is piped to onshore processing facilities near Darwin via an 890-km pipeline. The project, which announced its first condensate shipment last month, is projected to deliver 100,000 bpd of condensate at peak.
Darwin Clean Fuels intends for its conden- sate refinery to emit 75% less carbon dioxide (CO2) than a traditional crude oil refinery.
The company’s managing director, Tony Debenham, said refining condensate onshore in Australia would add value to the fuel rather than exporting it overseas for processing. Debenham added that the refinery would help to shore up Australia’s energy security, given that the country currently imports 600,000 bpd of transport fuels.
Week 45 06•November•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P9
