Page 13 - AsianOil Week 15

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andreviewtimingforthisprogrammeofworks,” he said.
ExxonMobil said in early March that it had drilled the first of West Barracouta wells to a total depth of 1.3 km and that a second was nearly complete. The company has said that despite the pandemic it will continue working to tie in West Barracouta to the Barracouta field and expects to have gas flowing from the find to the domestic gas market by early 2021.
The news of drilling stoppage comes a lit- tle more than a month after the energy giant
said it intended to open talks with prospective buyers over the sale of its stake in GBJV, which controls the Longford gas plant in addition to platforms offshore Victoria. The company had flagged up its interest in divesting the stake in September 2019.
“As we move through the course of this year, we will start really getting into gear with what people would view as a traditional sales process and entertaining commercial discussions,” Fay told the Sydney Morning Herald in March.v
Shell delays FID on Crux project in Australia
FINANCE & INVESTMENT
ROYAL Dutch Shell announced on April 7 that alongside its joint venture partners it had agreed to postpone a final investment decision (FID) on the proposed Crux gas project offshore Australia.
The FID had previously been targeted for this year. The move – like other delays being announced currently – has been attributed to the global economic downturn, the collapse in oil prices and uncertainties relating to the coro- navirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Shell’s joint venture partners in Crux are Osaka Gas and a unit of Seven Group Holdings. Gas from the project will be used to backfill the Prelude floating LNG (FLNG) facility in north- west Australia. Crux is one of several offshore gas fields in the region that have been awaiting devel- opment, but the schedules for these projects are now being pushed back as a global oversupply weighs on the LNG industry.
In late March, Woodside Petroleum announced deferrals for FIDs on three LNG-re- lated projects – the Scarborough offshore gas development, Browse LNG and Train 2 at the existing Pluto LNG facility. The Scarborough project will be developed to supply backfill volumes to Pluto, similar to Shell’s approach to bringing Crux online in order to supply Prelude.
A Shell spokeswoman told Reuters last week that the company remains committed to devel- oping Crux.
“This is consistent with Shell’s global approach of actively managing all operational and financial levers, including reducing capital spend,” she said. Indeed, Shell pulled out of the proposed Lake Charles LNG project on the US Gulf Coast in late March in response to the new market conditions.
Prelude, the world’s largest FLNG facility, entered service in June 2019. Loadings from
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