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Jemena signs pipeline deal with Tamboran

PIPELINES & WITH activity in the Northern Territory’s shale
TRANSPORT gas fields picking up in the wake of the coronavi-
rus (COVID-19) pandemic, industry excitement
over the region’s potential is also building.
Australian infrastructure operator Jemena
revealed this week that it had signed a memo-
randum of understanding (MoU) with Tamb-
oran Resources over developing infrastructure
capacity in the NT.
Tamboran holds a 25% non-operated interest
in Santos’s Beetaloo/McArthur Project, which
consists on EP161, EP162 and EP189.
Jemena said on November 11 that the MoU
would give it “exclusivity”, in return for speed-
ing up its more than AUD5bn ($3.63bn) plan
to increase the Northern Gas Pipeline’s (NGP)
capacity.
As a result of the partnership, Jemena said it
planned “to progressively increase” the NGP’s
capacity from around 90 TJ (2.34mn cubic
metres) per day of gas to 1 PJ (26.05 mcm) per
day through a combination of compression and
looping.
The NGP will then be connected to the com-
pany’s proposed Galilee gas pipeline, which will
span around 585 km from Galilee Energy’s Gle-
naras gas project near Longreach in the Galilee which it believes could occur towards the end of
Basin to the Wallumbilla gas hub in Queensland. the decade.
Jemena said it anticipated transporting up to The pipeline operator said the agreement
200 TJ (5.21 mcm) per day of gas via the NGP would hold Tamboran responsible for upstream
from 2025, with transport quantities increasing activities across the basin, without expanding on
as the extended and expanded pipelines come the scope of those activities.
online from the second half of the decade. The Jemena managing director Frank Tudor said:
company is also considering laying a pipeline “This is an important step towards delivering on
from Beetaloo to Darwin once new LNG trains the Commonwealth government’s plans for the
or local demand centres have been sanctioned, Beetaloo as part of a gas-led recovery from the
COVID-19 pandemic,” Tudor said. “While our
MoU with Tamboran gives us exclusivity, it also
highlights the importance of collaboration and
we plan to make our infrastructure available to
all industry participants.”
Tamboran managing director and CEO Joel
Riddle, meanwhile, said: “The announcement
of our partnership with Jemena represents a key
building block in our efforts to bring new sup-
plies of natural gas to energy-starved eastern
Australia by 2023-2024.”
Riddle described the exploration area in the
NT as “the hottest play on the planet” in an inter-
view with the Australian Financial Review in late
October. He said testing at the Tanumbirini-1,
located in EP161, had delivered much better
than expected flow rates, which augured well for
Santos being able to commercialise the project
with a lower well count.
“That’s where the productivity of the Beeta-
loo really differentiates itself versus other areas
of Australia: it’s big, it’s highly productive and it
can solve these shortfalls with just a handful of
wells,” he said. “This is why I believe this is the
hottest play on the planet ... definitely within the
OECD countries.”™

Week 45 12•November•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P11