markets | Australia
The global downturn is fi nally biting in Australia, spelling the end for many planned ‘mega projects’ but smaller pipeline investment continues, writes Nicholas Newman
Australia’s pipeline spending turns to smaller projects
Below: Laying of a 1m diameter gas pipeline across Gladstone harbour for BG Group’s
Queensland Curtis LNG plant
Australia’s resource-focused economy was insulated from the worst effects of the global downturn, helping the country build up an envious record of more than two decades of uninterrupted growth. Recent weakening Asian demand for its exports of coal, gas and iron ore has put that record at threat. However, there are some potential bright spots in the country’s energy sector, particularly in coal seam gas (CSG) production and LNG exports. Australia is the world’s ninth largest energy
producer and one of only three net energy exporting countries within the OECD group of developed nations. It has the largest proven gas reserves in the Asia-Pacif- ic region, amounting to some 43 trillion cubic feet (tcf), according to EIA Country Analysis August 2014. Most of the conventional natural gas reserves, some 92%, are
located in the North West Shelf in the Carnarvon and Browse basins of North Western Australia, in the Bonaparte basin shared between Australia and East Timor, in the Gippsland and Otway basins in South East Victoria Province, and in the Cooper-Eromanga basin in Central Australia (Figure 1). In addition to natural gas, Australia has an estimated
33 tcf of commercially viable reserves of coal seam gas (CSG), which is principally located in North East Queensland Province in the Bowen and Surat basin. This attracted a huge A$31bn investment in 2010.
Natural gas market The near doubling of Australia’s natural gas production after 2003 and huge recent and current investments in LNG export processing plant is supporting the transfor- mation of the country into the world’s third largest exporter of Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) today, and is predicted to propel it past Qatar to take the world’s number one position in 2020. According to EIA data, Australian natural gas
production reached 2,179 mmcf in 2014 of which exports, in the form of LNG, accounted for 42% or 920 mmcf. In addition, CSG production in New South Wales and Queensland reached 225 mmcf, much of which has been exported to Japan and China via Curtis Island’s LNG plant, according to the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association’s (APPEA) Annual
10 PIPELINE COATING | September 2015
www.pipeline-coating.com
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