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project and that the joint venture partners would make a nal investment decision (FID) in the “near term”.
Genesis is the country’s biggest power and gas retailer and buys all of the eld’s produc- tion. It said there had been no change to eld reserve estimates.
e eld has three producing wells and out- put is sent via a 30-km pipeline to an onshore processing station. From there it is eventually piped into the North Island transmission net- work. Condensate is exported, while LPG is sold on the local market.
Beach said in October that it might be possi- ble to continue producing from the eld for more
Image: Beach Energy
than a decade without having to drill another well. Beach described the compression project as a “low-risk, high-value” way to extend the eld’s life. Genesis, meanwhile, has estimated that its share of the compressor project’s cost could be as much as NZ$30mn ($19.6mn) over nancial 2019-2020 and 2020-2021.™
PNG backs Papua LNG agreement
POLICY
PAPUA New Guinea (PNG) Petroleum Minister Kerenga Kua has said the government will stand behind the natural gas agreement it signed in April, paving the way for the development of the Papua LNG project.
Kua said the cabinet had on July 2 “agreed in principle” to honour the agreement sign with Total, Oil Search and ExxonMobil that set out the project’s scal framework.
“ e state has reserved its rights to discuss a shortlist of matters to be discussed with the developers,” Kua told reporters on August 4. “We believe that what we have discussed and agreed to are favourable and will not a ect the general economics and scal terms of the Papua LNG Gas Agreement.”
Total has a 31.1% operated interesting in the Petroleum Retention Licence 15 (PRL 15) joint venture, which is developing the Elk-Antelope gas discovery, post the state’s back-in right of 22.5%. ExxonMobil owns 28.3% and Oil Search has the remining 17.7%. e partners are work- ing towards a nal investment decision (FID) on Papua LNG, targeted for 2020.
The venture intends to add two 2.7mn tonne per year (tpy) trains to the
existing ExxonMobil-operated PNG LNG. e US super-major is also leading the development of PRL 3, which contains the P’nyang eld and will feed another new 2.7mn tpy train.
Kua’s comments come as something of a sur- prise a er several weeks of sabre-rattling over the agreement. e minister, who was appointed to his position on June 6, has been a vocal critic of the gas agreement signed by former prime minister Peter O’Neill, who resigned in May.
Kua indicated late last month that the agree- ment could be rewritten if a review found the terms to be unfavourable to the country.
“Any signatory to a contract can, any time after an agreement has been signed, go back to the negotiating table if they are, as an a er- thought, unsatis ed with certain aspects of the terms and conditions of the contract,” Kua told Reuters on July 25. “Our approach is purely com- mercial in nature.”
Commenting on the PNG government’s appar- ent change of heart, Oil Search managing director Peter Botten said on August 5 that his company was “encouraged by the statement made by the minis- ter” and that he hoped development could now progress “in a timely manner”.™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 31 07•August•2019