Rick Wilkinson
OGJ Correspondent
MELBOURNE, Sept. 17 -- Joint venture partners Apache Energy Ltd. and Santos Ltd. broke ground at the Devil Creek domestic natural gas processing plant site in the Pilbara region of Western Australia about 50 km south of Karratha.
The plant will be fed raw gas through a 105-km subsea pipeline from the joint venture’s offshore Reindeer field development in the WA-209-P permit.
The plant will supply as much as 220 TJ/day of gas into the Dampier-Bunbury trunk line. It will also produce as much as 500 b/d of condensate.
Santos has already signed up CITIC Pacific Ltd., Hong Kong, as the project’s foundation gas buyer.
Under the $812 million (Aus.) contract, Santos will supply CITIC’s Sino Iron magnetite mining project at Cape Preston, 100 km south of Dampier with 75 PJ of gas over 7 years from the latter half of 2011. The gas will be used as generation fuel for Sino’s 450-Mw electric power station now under construction.
Reindeer field was discovered in 1997 and has a recoverable resource range of 390-610 bcf of gas.
Perth-based engineering and construction company Clough Australia is engaged as engineering, procurement and module fabrication contract for the Devil Creek project.
The $54 million (Aus.) contract is for engineering, design work, and procurement of all permanent materials and equipment plus fabrication and assembly of all modules for the facility.
Apache Energy in West Perth, a subsidiary of Houston-based Apache Corp., has 55% of the project with Santos holding 45%.