Australia's Waitsia Project begins sending gas to LNG export

Beach Energy, an Australian company, announced on Monday that the Waitsia onshore project located north of Perth has begun sending natural gas to Woodside Energy's liquidified natural gas export facility.

Mitsui, a Japanese company, operates the Waitsia Project and shares it with Beach.

Mitsui and Beach have signed a contract with the North West Shelf partners Woodside, BP Shell and Japan LNG for the supply of the facility in 2020. Japan LNG, a partnership between Mitsui & Mitsubishi, holds a sixth of the facility.

Murray Watt, Australia's Environment Minister, signed a contract to extend the life of the LNG export facility until 2070 a few months ago. However, the gas fields which have fed the facility for decades are deteriorating, despite the planned infill drilling by Woodside.

Waitsia will be used as a stopgap until Woodside approves its large offshore Browse project.

Waitsia, one of the two domestic gas projects allowed to export gas in Western Australia, is one of just two.

Mitsui acquired a stake in Waitsia, in the Perth Basin, in late 2017, via the acquisition of AWE. The first gas export was originally scheduled for 2023, but was postponed after a company that had been hired to build the processing facility collapsed.

A deal signed in 2020 will see the field send a total 7.5 million tons of gas up to North West Shelf. Helen Clark, Cynthia Osterman and Cynthia Clark contributed to this report.

(source: Reuters)