Oil & Gas Journal - ConocoPhillips mulls additional trains at Darwin

Rick WilkinsonOGJ Correspondent
MELBOURNE, June 21 -- ConocoPhillips Australia Pty. Ltd., operator of the Darwin LNG plant, could spend as much as $10 billion (Aus.) to build a second and perhaps a third train on site to treble the current capacity of 3.5 million tonnes/year of LNG.
Speaking at the South East Asia Australia Offshore Conference in Darwin, ConocoPhillips Australia Pres. Laura Sugg said the company could build a second train by 2013 using gas from the Greater Sunrise fields or the Caldita discovery in conjunction with yet-to-be discovered fields in the Timor Sea.
The current facility at Wickham Point has government environmental and planning approvals for the manufacture of as much as 10 million tonnes/year. Any greater increase would need to go through a new approvals process.
Greater Sunrise, although still under a cloud of uncertainty because of its location straddling the boundary between Australia and the Joint Petroleum Development Area with East Timor, has reserves of about 7 tcf of gas. It is operated by Woodside Petroleum Ltd., but ConocoPhillips is a partner.
Caldita field, discovered by the ConocoPhillips-Santos Ltd. joint venture on Permit NT/P61 in 2005, is clearly in Australian waters to the northeast of Darwin. No reserves figures have been released, but the discovery well did flow at 33 MMcfd on test.
ConocoPhillips intends to drill an appraisal well at Caldita during the fourth quarter of this year.
The company, along with with Santos, is currently drilling a well on the nearby Evans Shoal South prospect in NT/P48 and intends to move to appraise the gas found in the Lynedoch structure—now renamed Barossa and again with Santos—in NT/P69 further to the east during the third quarter.
It is hoped this aggressive drilling program will prove up sufficient gas reserves to support the second and possibly third LNG train in Darwin.