Chevron Australia has awarded a $20 million (Aus.) contract for geotechnical investigations for its proposed Wheatstone domestic gas and LNG project in Western Australia to ground engineering and environmental services company Golder Associates.

Kitimat LNG Inc., which plans to export natural gas via an LNG plant in British Columbia, has sold a majority interest in the export project to Apache Canada Ltd., a unit of Apache Corp.

Woodside Petroleum Ltd. lost a foundation customer for its proposed Browse LNG project following the Dec. 31, 2009, expiry of an agreement to sell as much as 3 million tonnes/year of LNG to PetroChina Co. Ltd.

The Australia Pacific LNG (APLNG) joint venture (a 50-50 partnership of Origin Energy Ltd., Sydney, and ConocoPhillips) awarded two upstream design, engineering, and construction contracts for its coalseam methane supplied LNG project in Queensland.

Brazil’s state-run Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) and its partners in a joint venture to build an onboard natural gas liquefaction unit (ONGU) for the presalt area, signed three agreements to develop the unit’s front-end engineering and design.

Chevron Australia and Chubu Electric Power Co. of Japan have signed a long-term agreement for sale to Chubu of 1.44 million tonnes/year of LNG from the 15 million tonne/year Gorgon liquefaction plant under construction on Barrow Island off Western Australia (OGJ Online, Nov. 13, 2009).

Inpex has delayed a decision whether to proceed with the $20 billion, 8 million tonne/year Ichthys LNG project in Darwin, Australia, as engineering work will take longer than expected (OGJ, Jan. 26, 2009, Newsletter).

The Papua New Guinea government has approved a project agreement for an LNG project planned by InterOil, Cairns, Australia, based on gas reserves in its Elk and Antelope fields in the country’s Gulf province.