Rick Wilkinson
OGJ Correspondent
MELBOURNE, May 24 -- Inpex Australia, Perth, reported a delay in its proposed Ichthys LNG project in Darwin.
Inpex Pres. Naoki Kuroda said a final investment decision was now not expected until fourth-quarter 2011. This will mean production from the project will not begin until the last quarter of 2016.
Kuroda said the Ichthys project, which will produce gas from the field in the Browse basin off northwest Western Australia and pipe it more than 850 km to an LNG plant in Darwin, is very large and complex. Inpex is taking its time to optimize all aspects of the design to minimize the risk of increasing costs.
In particular the company is focusing on reducing the weight of the offshore central processing facility and allowing more time to prepare and evaluate tender proposals.
This facility could be the world’s largest floating processing platform, capable of stripping out 100,000 b/d of condensate from the gas stream.
The project is expected to have an initial output of 8.4 million tonnes/year of LNG from two trains. It will also produce 1.6 million tpy of LPG.
