Offshore Australia: Woodside signs lease on land for Browse support.
Woodside lands Browse site deal
Australian giant Woodside Petroleum, operator of the Browse liquefied natural gas export project in Australia, reached an agreement to lease land at Broome Port on the country’s northwest coast to support the proposed venture.
The land will help with construction and operational work for the Browse LNG project, Roger Martin, Perth-based spokesman for Woodside, said in an e-mailed response to questions today.
Woodside said in April it preferred a planned Kimberley gas hub in the far northwest as the site for an LNG processing plant.
The Browse partners, which include supermajors BP and Chevron, are studying other options and are yet to select a location for the project, Martin said in a Bloomberg report.
A development decision on the venture is expected in 2011, Woodside said 24 July.
Woodside has three years to take up an option to a minimum 25-year lease for as much as 15 hectares of land, Broome Port Authority said in a statement today.
The Kimberley site and Woodside-operated facilities near Karratha are being examined as options by the Browse partners for a processing plant, Martin said.
Processing gas at Karratha would involve piping the fuel more than 800 kilometres (500 miles) to the south from Browse.
The proposed Kimberley LNG hub at James Price Point is about 50 kilometres north of Broome.
The Browse field is among untapped deposits off Australia’s undeveloped Kimberley coast where more than a third of the nation’s known offshore gas is located.