Northwestern Australia News

Shell said on Friday it had loaded and shipped a cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG) this week at its Prelude floating LNG facilityafter workers scaled-down industrial action at the site off northwestern Australia.The oil and gas giant slowed output at the 3.6-million tonne per year facility last week during a series of work stoppages by unions fighting for better pay and had warned that shipments would be disrupted for at least two weeks.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc shut production at its Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) site and Chevron Corp shut one of three processing units at its Gorgon LNG plant, both off northwestern Australia, the companies said on Friday.The Gorgon and Prelude outages are expected to boost spot LNG prices, which are up about 20% from a month ago.Shell said Prelude was hit by a power outage on Thursday after smoke was detected in an electrical utility area, and the facility is operating on back-up diesel generators.

Australia is on track to surpass Qatar as the world’s largest LNG exporter, according to Australia’s Department of Industry, Innovation, and Science (DIIS).Australia already surpasses Qatar in LNG export capacity and exported more LNG than Qatar in November 2018 and April 2019, said a release from U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).Within the next year, as Australia’s newly commissioned projects ramp up and operate at full capacity, EIA expects Australia to consistently export more LNG than Qatar, it said.Australia’s LNG export capacity increased from 2.6 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2011 to more than 11.4 Bcf/d in 2019.

Royal Dutch Shell on Monday said it had shipped the first condensate cargo from its Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) project off northwestern Australia over the weekend."We can confirm that the first shipment of condensate has sailed from the Shell-operated Prelude FLNG facility.

Giant iron ore port may close as Australian storm builds. Vessels may be cleared from Australia's Port Hedland, the world's biggest iron ore export terminal, as early as Thursday as a safety precaution because of a tropical storm, port manager Pilbara Ports Authority said on Wednesday. The authority said Port Hedland may start clearing vessels on Thursday morning if the tropical low builds overnight into a cyclone off the Western Australia coastline. Port Hedland is used by three of Australia's top four iron ore miners - BHP,, Fortescue Metals Group and Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting. A significant risk remains that it might become a severe tropical cyclone early on Friday…

A tropical cyclone intensifying off northwestern Australia was on course to sweep across some of the world's largest iron ore mines after causing giant shipping ports to close. Vale declared 'force majeur' and iron ore prices rose world-wide, reports Reuters. Shipments of millions of tonnes of iron ore were suspended from the west Australian ports of Port Hedland, Dampier and Cape Lambert ahead of Cyclone Christine, a category three tropical storm, making landfall. Cyclones typically cause disruptions to mining operations of between two and five days…

Technip has been awarded a subsea contract by Chevron Australia Pty. Ltd. for the Wheatstone Project, one of Australia’s largest resource projects. The contract, valued at approximately €245 million, covers the development of the Wheatstone and Iago fields, located in the Carnarvon Basin, offshore Northwestern Australia. This contract includes project management, design, fabrication and installation of subsea isolation valve; production tee protection structures, spools(1) and jumpers(2);  transport and installation of manifold, foundation structures and pipeline; termination structures; and supply and installation of 41 kilometres of umbilicals. Technip’s operating center in Perth, Australia, will manage the overall project with engineering to begin immediately.

According to an Oct. 9 report from The Wall Street Journal, Royal Dutch Shell PLC announced plans to deploy the world's first floating liquefied-natural-gas facility, off the coast of northwestern Australia, in a move that could have major repercussions for the global natural-gas industry. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

The Malta-flag bulker XL has been taken under tow by a tug and is bound for Singapore, Reuters reported. The 150,661-dwt bulker had been drifting off northwestern Australia after an engine room fire in which two crew members died on November 10.

Australia's Woodside Petroleum Ltd reported it has been given the green light to start work on its 12 billion Australian dollar Pluto liquefied natural gas project in northwestern Australia after the federal government gave environmental approval for the development, according to a report by Forbes. Woodside, which is 34 percent owned by Royal Dutch Shell, said this is the last of the key state and federal environmental and heritage approvals required for the project to proceed. Woodside has already signed 15-year sales agreements worth billions of dollars with Japan's Tokyo Gas and Kansai Electric, totaling up to 3.75 million tons of LNG a year. It expects to sell the remaining output through additional term contracts or spot sales. First delivery is expected in late 2010.

According to Bloomberg, Perth-based Woodside Petroleum Ltd. plans to skirt concern among Californians about the safety of liquefied natural gas import terminals by delivering the fuel directly into pipelines from ships moored offshore. Australia's second-biggest oil and gas producer will invest to develop the new technology and get access to the most populous U.S. state. In June, Woodside withdrew from a plan to build a permanent LNG terminal in the state, which relies on imports for 87 percent of its gas. Larger rivals including BHP Billiton have so far failed to persuade Californians to accept construction of terminals on or near the mainland and ease a gas shortage that helped to boost prices more than fourfold since 2001.