Inpex forging ahead at Ichthys
Japanese operator Inpex is making progress on its US$34 billion Ichthys liquefied natural gas development in Western Australia.
Speaking at the Australia Petroleum Production & Exploration Association conference in Melbourne on Wednesday, Inpex’s president director, Australia, Seiya Ito said the project was about 70% complete.
Ito said the first topside modules had been lifted last month onto the hulls of both the floating production storage and offloading facility and the central processing facility, which are both under construction in South Korea.
“These lifts mean that after years of engineering and design, fabrication and testing, the hulls and topsides on both the CPF and FPSO are finally coming together as single connected structures for the first time,” he said.
The 889-kilometre pipeline connecting the offshore field to the onshore LNG plant in Darwin is almost 50% complete, with Ito saying Inpex expected to finish the construction of the pipeline by the end of the year.
Looking at the onshore portion of the project, Ito said major civil works at the onshore site were completed and the company was now shifting its focus to the mechanical and electrical phase, while construction on the project’s loading jetty has been completed.
The Ichthys field lies off the coast of north-west Australia and is estimated hold roughly 13 trillion cubic feet of gas and more than 500 million barrels of condensate.
Output from the field will be processed at the CPF while the FPSO will store condensate which will be periodically offloaded to shuttle carriers for export directly to market.
Gas from the field will be exported via the subsea pipeline to the onshore processing facilities near Darwin in the Northern Territory.
The project is scheduled to start up by the end of 2016 with expected peak production of 8.4 million tonnes per annum of LNG, 1.6 million tpa of liquid petroleum gas and up to 100,000 barrels per day of condensate.
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