General – LNG
Australia’s Woodside Petroleum said on Thursday it has started sending gas from its Pluto offshore field to the North West Shelf project’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant.
This allows the company to cash in on soaring global LNG prices.
The gas is flowing through a 3.2-kilometre (2-mile) pipeline Woodside built to connect its Pluto LNG plant with the North West Shelf project’s Karratha gas plant (KGP), also operated by Woodside.
The interconnector gives Woodside an additional outlet for gas from the Pluto field while also helping to fill spare capacity at the Karratha gas plant.
The Karratha plant needs new sources of gas to fill its 16.9 million tonnes a year capacity as the original fields in the North West Shelf project, Australia’s oldest and largest LNG project, are drying up.
Gas from the Pluto field is the first to go into the Karratha plant from outside the North West Shelf venture’s original sources. Woodside will pay a tolling fee to the North West Shelf joint venture to process its Pluto gas.
