Japan’s Inpex is reportedly now aiming in mid-2024 to enter the front-end engineering and design phase for its 9.5 million tonnes per annum Abadi liquefied natural gas project in Indonesia with the final investment decision expected some two years later.
Inpex has already signed letters of intent with potential LNG customers for its greenfield Abadi LNG project, chief executive Takayuki Ueda told S&P Global Commodity Insights on the sidelines of Gastech 2023 in Singapore.
He also revealed that Inpex is considering adding a third liquefaction train to its existing Ichthys LNG project in Australia as the company scales up its LNG operations.
Inpex is looking to enter the FEED stage for Abadi LNG around mid-2024 “or by the end of next year at the latest” after the company secures approval from the Indonesian authorities for the revised Plan of Development (POD) — which includes a carbon capture and storage scheme — said Ueda, adding that it “expects to reach the FID in about two years since the start of FEED”.
The operator April submitted a revised POD for the Abadi LNG project incorporating a CCS component to the Indonesian government authorities and has plans to revise the production sharing contract to reflect the incorporation of CCS following approval of the POD.
“We will need to work on arranging finance, finding buyers and working on detailed design works in parallel during the FEED phase because we would not be able to take the FID without securing long-term contracts and subsequent finance,” Ueda told S&P Global.
He added that potential customers for Abadi’s LNG to date come from Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia, including Indonesia itself.
Inpex’s stated goal of late has been that Abadi would start-up in the early 2030s however Indonesia’s director general of oil and gas at the Ministry of Energy & Mineral Resources, Tutuka Ariadji, told Gastech 2023 that it is hoping for commercial operations to commence at the end iof 2029.
Ichthys expansion
Meanwhile, Inpex is considering adding a third train at its 8.9 million tpa Ichthys LNG project in Australia “around 2030”, Ueda told S&P Global, although that would require new reserves being discovered or sourced.
The Japanese company is currently debottlenecking the existing two-train Ichthys facility, which should boost production capacity to 9.3 million tpa later this year.
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