Page 11 - GLNG Week 41

GLNG AUSTRALASIA GLNG
Woodside readjusts project timelines
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
The Scarborough gas project is linked to the expansion of the Pluto LNG facility.
AUSTRALIA’S Woodside Energy has delayed a final investment decision (FID) on its proposed Browse mega-project to the second half of 2021. However, the company has also brought plans to approve its Scarborough gas project and Pluto LNG expansion forward slightly.
An FID on the $20.5bn Browse project was previously expected in late 2020, but has had to be delayed amid ongoing negotiations between Woodside and its partners in the scheme. There is only some overlap in ownership between the Browse gas field and the related North West Shelf LNG project. Woodside, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Japanese firms Mitusbishi and Mitsui & Co. havestakesinboththefieldandtheLNGplant. Meanwhile, Chevron and BHP have interests in the LNG project, and PetroChina owns a stake in the Browse field.
Woodside said it still expected the partners to be able to start front-end engineering design (FEED) work for Browse by the end of this year following delays.
The company had been planning to approve
the Pluto LNG expansion and Scarborough pro- ject in the first half of 2020, but now says the FID will come in the early part of that year.
The expedited timetable for the Scarborough project is dependent on Woodside reaching an agreement with partner BHP on a price for processing gas from the field at the Pluto facility. Woodside’s chief financial officer, Sherry Duhe, told Reuters that there was pressure on BHP to finalise a tolling agreement before the end of the year. The miner also has an option to increase its stake in Scarborough by 10% to 35%, which expires on December 31.
“We’re just haggling on the final bit of pricing onthetoll,”Duhesaid.“Timeisdefinitelywork- ing in all of our favour now to just go ahead and ink that deal so that we can move to FID in early next year on both Scarborough and Pluto.”
Woodside also reported third-quarter rev- enue of $1.16bn on October 17, which was unchanged from a year earlier. Higher produc- tion was offset by weaker LNG prices during the quarter.™
EUROPE
Gazprom Neft mulls LNG bunkering
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
GAZPROM Neft, the oil arm of Russia’s natural gas giant Gazprom, is looking to make a foray into LNG bunkering in 2021.
The company already has extensive marine bunkering operations offered at 37 ports world- wide, with fuel sales volumes reaching 2.92mn tonnes in 2018. But new IMO shipping rules reducing the permissible sulphur content in marine fuels globally from 3.5% currently to 0.5% from next year could put pressure on its business.
Beyond the supply of cleaner oil-based fuels, Gazprom Neft also sees LNG as a solution. The company aims to launch its first pilot LNG refu- elling vessel in the second quarter of 2021, its head of marine bunkering, Alexei Medvedev, said at a conference in Moscow on October 10.
Gazprom Neft will commission two more LNG bunkering vessels within the next decade, according to Medvedev, who noted that global demand for LNG bunkering could grow by 40mn tonnes per year (tpy).
“Experts’ forecasts regarding the demand for LNG bunkering vary significantly, but are mainly in the range of 10 to 40mn tonnes of LNG per year in the long term until 2030,” he said.
Gazprom Neft’s preparations to enter the global LNG bunkering market follow similar moves by its parent company, Gazprom, and its
independent Russian rival, Novatek. Gazprom intends to launch a 1.5mn tpy liquefaction plant 150km north-west of St Petersburg next year that will primarily serve as a basis for Baltic Sea bun- kering operations. It has drawn up blueprints for two similar plants on the Black Sea and in the Far East but is yet to finalise these projects.
Novatek, on the other hand, operates a smaller 660,000 tpy plant, also on the Baltic Sea, in partnership with Gazprom’s bank- ing arm, Gazprombank. The capacity of the Vysotsk plant, started up in April, will poten- tially be enlarged by a further 1.1mn tpy by the end of 2020.™
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