East Timor to build second LNG plant

Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Francisco da Costa Monteiro said that East Timor plans to build a second "liquefied natural" gas plant along its southern coast. The plant will use leftover gas from Bayu-Undan, Chuditch and other fields.

The company hopes to feed the 5 million metric tons per year Timor LNG plant with Greater Sunrise gas fields that it shares jointly with Woodside Energy.

The minister told a group of journalists?on the fringes of a conference that he thought the leftover gas from the Santos-operated Bayu-Undan gas field could amount to 1 trillion cubic foot of gas. This, combined with the Sunda Energy Chuditch gas fields, could support a 1.5 million ton development per year, which would have a life expectancy of 20 years.

In comparison, the United States has a LNG capacity of?around 130 millions tons per year?

Bayu-Undan supplied Santos' Darwin LNG plant of 3.6 million tons for over a decade, before it began to decline.

The minister stated on Monday that he expects an investment decision to be made by 2029 for the Sunrise gas field, which has a capacity of more than ten Tcf.

He said that he was still in discussions with the relevant parties about plans for a new LNG plant.

I just got back from China. "We had some discussions."

Santos had planned to repurpose this field for carbon storage and capture, but Monteiro said that could only happen if Santos agreed to develop the remaining gas reservoir and use the field infrastructure to process third party gas.

Santos confirmed that the talks had taken place and noted that it was waiting for a draft of an agreement from the East Timor Government.

Kevin Gallagher, the Managing Director of Bayu-Undan, told a Darwin conference earlier in September that there was still a "significant" amount of gas.

Sunda CEO Andy Butler said the Chuditch Field could send up to 300 million cubic feet of air per day.

(source: Reuters)