LNG

European liquefied natural gas and wholesale pipeline gas prices soared by over 16 percent on the week while stronger Asian spot cargo values and higher global gas futures prices signalled a return of volatility to a market harbouring doubts about the stability of supplies.

Warren Buffett, the Chief Executive and Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and America’s best-known investor, said his group did not intend to acquire more shares in Occidental Petroleum nor try and take it over while it also sold billions-worth of shares in LNG operator Chevron Corp. and dumped more US bank stocks.

The liquefied natural gas export project proposed for the Timor Sea resources of the Greater Sunrise gas fields offshore northern Australia and the tiny nation of Timor-Leste is to be the subject of a concept selection programme after almost 20 years of delays.

The Greater Sunrise joint venture is majority controlled (56.56 percent) by the Timor-Leste national oil company, while Australian LNG producer Woodside Energy owns more than 33 percent and the balance of 10 percent is held by Japanese utility Osaka Gas.

Talks between Woodside, the Australian government and Timor-Este on the future of a Greater Sunrise LNG project have continued intermittently for years and have now reached a settlement point.

“The Sunrise joint venture will consider all of the key issues for delivering the gas, for processing and LNG sales, to Timor-Leste compared to delivering the gas to Australia,” explained the statement.

The Greater Sunrise gas fields are located about 150 kilometres (93 miles) off Timor-Leste and 450km northwest of Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory.

“In parallel to the concept select program, the joint venture is progressing the negotiation of the new Production Sharing Contract, Petroleum Mining Code and associated agreements with the Timor-Leste and Australian Governments, which upon finalisation will provide the fiscal and regulatory certainty required for a development to proceed,” the joint statement concluded.

Resources available

The resources of the Sunrise and Troubadour gas fields that would be developed contain contingent resource (2C) of 5.3 trillion cubic feet of dry gas and 226 million barrels of condensate.

Woodside Energy Chief Executive Meg O’Neill said the development of new technologies and growing demand for safe and reliable LNG meant it was “the right time to bring forward the concept selection” programme.

“It is important we continue to look at ways to develop the Greater Sunrise fields using the latest technologies by evaluating, for example, modular LNG, that did not exist in the past,” explained O’Neill.

“Against a backdrop of global geopolitical instability and constrained energy supply chains, there is an opportunity for the Sunrise Joint Venture to significantly advance this regionally important project,” she stated.

Long awaited

Antonio de Sousa,, the President and Chief Executive of Timor-Leste’s state energy company, Timor GAP, said he was pleased that all the efforts had contributed towards realising the “long-awaited goal” of developing Greater Sunrise.

“This path forward is a significant commitment to our stakeholders, to the aspirations of those who made sacrifices to achieve independence for the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, and to the future of our people and Timor-Leste,” stated De Sousa.

“It offers a clearer path to prosperity, equality, peace, stability and sustainability for current and future generations,” he added.

The Managing Director of Osaka Gas Australia, Yo Otsuka, said it was important to assess and compare the development concepts “from both technical and commercial points of view to select the best option” for the success of the Sunrise project.

Norwegian energy company Equinor said plans have been agreed to invest $1.33 billion in upgrading the Hammerfest LNG plant, Western Europe’s only baseload export facility, and to extend its lifespan towards 2050.

Aug 30 (LNGJ) - Tellurian Inc., the developer of the Driftwood LNG export plant in Louisiana with 27.6 million tonnes per annum of output and an associated pipeline, intends to offer and sell units consisting of 11.25 percent senior secured notes due in 2027 ($1,000 principal amount per note) and warrants to purchase shares of Tellurian common stock in an underwritten public offering.

   “The company intends to use the net proceeds from the offering by contributing them to the Driftwood Project entities to support the construction of the Driftwood Project,” said the company. B. Riley Securities, Inc. is acting as sole bookrunning manager for the offering. Tellurian noted that offering may be made only by means of a prospectus supplement and an accompanying prospectus.

ExxonMobil Corp., the long-standing partner of Qatar in oil and gas and LNG, has become as expected the fourth signatory of a joint venture stake in the North Field East LNG expansion project.

US major ConocoPhillips become the third international company to be awarded a stake in QatarEnergy’s North Field East (NFE) liquefied natural gas expansion project aimed at putting Qatar back in the No. 1 spot for global exporters.

QatarEnergy still holds a majority stake in the $28.75 billion NFE expansion joint venture after earlier awarded similar stakes to French major TotalEnergies and Italy’s Eni.

The NFE expansion is scheduled to come on stream by early 2022 using abundant feed gas from the North field in the Arabian Gulf and boosting Qatar’s LNG production capacity to 110 million tonnes per annum from the existing 77 MTPA.

Ryan Lance, the Chairman and Chief Executive of ConocoPhillips, signed the partnership agreement during a ceremony held at QatarEnergy’s headquarters in Doha in the presence of senior executives from both companies.

ConocoPhillips has similar terms to its French and Italian counterparts and has a 25 percent interest in a new joint venture with QatarEnergy owning 75 percent.

The Qatar-ConocoPhillips joint venture will hold a 12.5 percent stake in the 32 MTPA NFE development.

The upstream part of the project is already under way to develop the southeast area of the North Field via eight platforms, 80 wells and gas pipelines to the onshore liquefaction plant.

Experience

“We sign a new partnership agreement that will further enhance our relationship and enable us to benefit from the wide experience of ConocoPhillips in the development of the world’s largest LNG expansion project,” said Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, the Minister of State for Energy Affairs for Qatar as well as President and CEO of QatarEnergy.

“Our work together will enable us to meet our target of increasing the State of Qatar’s LNG production capacity,” he added.

“Our collaboration will help produce cleaner energy to meet growing global demand and achieve a realistic energy transition towards achieving our climate change objectives thanks to the project’s industry-leading environmental attributes, including carbon capture and sequestration and other technologies deployed in this project,” explained Al-Kaabi.

In his remarks during the ceremony, ConocoPhillips CEO Lance said the US major was delighted to build on its long history of partnering with Qatar and to participate in this next phase of development of Qatar's North Field.

“We recognize that LNG plays an increasingly important role in energy security and the global energy transition,” stated Lance.

QatarEnergy said more partners are scheduled to join the NFE expansion project and relevant announcements would be made soon.

Qatar’s long-term main energy partner, ExxonMobil, is expected to be a another of the shareholders amid media speculation that a Chinese oil and gas major may also be accorded a Gulf LNG stake for the first time.

Santos Ltd., the operator of the Gladstone LNG plant in Queensland and Darwin LNG in the Northern Territory, said that its Barossa LNG feed-gas project offshore northwest Australia remained on-track for a final investment decision in the first half of 2021 and with key Japanese customer interest.

TechnipFMC, the Franco-US energy engineering business, has re-started the process of spinning off Technip Energies, one of the world’s leading LNG project engineers, and has already put several financial transactions in place to complete the operation in the next couple of months.

Times have changed for liquefied natural gas project investment with global ventures facing more challenging times and with gas producers and buyers facing contrasting fortunes, according to the International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook 2020.