Regional LNG: Woodside Petroleum eyes new LNG project for China market

Woodside Petroleum Ltd is eyeing the development of its Browse gasfields off the northern Australia coast as its third liquefied natural gas project, with China seen as potential market, chief executive Don Voelte told an analysts' briefing Wednesday as reported by AFX News

Voelte said the group had been marketing the potential of Browse, which had gas reserves sufficient to support a large long-life LNG project, in China but did not go into details.

He said Woodside views Browse as having the potential to jump the queue in terms of LNG project developments and sees it as becoming the company's third LNG hub after the long-established one-sixth owned and operated North West Shelf project off Australia's northwest shelf and the yet-to-be-developed Greater Sunrise project in the Timor Sea, owned in a joint venture with Shell ConocoPhillips and Osaka Gas.

"We will have to appraise Browse in the next year and to get a very firm handle on reserves .. we compare it to all the other gas projects and we think it deserves to move up in the queue," Voelte said.

"We've talked to the Chinese and other countries and the bottomline is it is very favourably received in the market place."

Voelte said Australian LNG export projects had the potential to gain markets in China, elsewhere in Asia and the US ahead of competing projects elsewhere in the world because the North West Shelf project had forged Australia's reputation as a stable and reliable LNG supplier.(*)