Offshore staff
PERTH, Australia – Woodside Energy says the Browse Joint Venture has made significant progress in the development concept for the long-proposed Browse LNG project offshore northwest Australia.
The Browse Joint Venture is in commercial discussions with the North West Shelf (NWS) consortium on taking the Browse resources through the NWS infrastructure.
Their proposed development concept is based on proven technologies that includes two FPSOs delivering around 10 MMt/yr of gas through a 900-km (559-mi) pipeline to existing NWS infrastructure.
Produced condensate would be exported directly from the FPSOs.
Woodside says the NWS participants are in alignment on key terms and pricing for processing Browse and other resource owners’ gas through their facilities. Four of the five Browse Joint Venture participants also have an interest in the NWS Project.
The target is to start the concept definition phase later this year, with a preliminary tolling agreement expected between the NWS and Browse partners later in the current quarter.
Woodside is aiming for front-end engineering design (FEED) entry in 4Q 2019, a final investment decision (FID) in 2021, and start-up in 2026 for the associated Calliance and Brecknock fields and 2027 for the Torosa field.
As for other planned gas projects offshore Western Australia, the company is also progressing development of the Scarborough field to take advantage of an anticipated global LNG supply gap from the early 2020s.
This follows Woodside’s completion of the acquisition of an additional 50% in the WA-1-R permit which contains the majority of theScarborough gas field. The company became operator of the field this April.
Scarborough, which holds 7.3 tcf, is in the Carnarvon basin, 375 km (233 mi) west/north-west of the Burrup Peninsula. The partners favor a development through LNG infrastructure on the peninsula.
They propose 12 subsea, high-rate gas wells tied back to a semisubmersible floating production platform. Woodside says development planning is well advanced, with a geophysical survey for the proposed Scarborough export pipeline route completed last month.
The pipeline would cross the Carnarvon basin, near undeveloped fields, so provision is planned for future tie-ins along the route, with confidentiality agreements progressing with other resources owners to facilitate data exchange for evaluation of these tie-ins.
Woodside’s own preferred option would be to process Scarborough’s gas through a brownfield expansion of the Pluto LNG facilities. The composition of the gas, it believes, is well suited to the Pluto LNG plant, which is designed for lean gas and nitrogen removal.
The upstream development will likely be designed for a 7-9 MMt/yr capacity. Woodside’s proposed downstream development would entail an additional train at Pluto LNG with targeted capacity of 4-5 MMt/yr.
The company has awarded various contracts to support early concept definition phase engineering and is in discussions with potential contractors for offshore and onshore engineering, procurement, and construction.
It is targeting FEED entry in 1Q 2019, FID in 2020, upstream online in 2023, and the downstream in 2024.
In an unrelated development, the Pluto Joint Venture took FID earlier this year on the PLA07 infill well, due to be executed next year. The also took FID on the Pluto water handling project, which involves construction and installation of a water handling module on the Pluto platform to enable wet gas production from 2021.
Woodside also continues technical studies on the proposed Pluto-NWS Interconnector, connecting Pluto LNG with the Karratha Gas Plant.
This could support acceleration of Pluto area gas and open development of unallocated resources in the Carnarvon and Greater Exmouth basins, the company said. It is pursuing FID in 2019 and start-up in 2021.
Concept definition started in 2Q for the proposed development of the Pyxis and Pluto North infill wells, through a 25-km (16-mi) tieback to the Pluto platform. These could come onstream in 2021, aligned with the proposed Pluto-NWS Interconnector.
In support of production from the Chevron-operated Wheatstone project, Woodside is progressing concept definition forPhase 2 of the Julimar-Brunello project.
This will tieback the Julimar field to the existing Brunello subsea infrastructure connected to the Wheatstone offshore platform. FEED has started, with FID targeted for 2Q 2019.
TheGreater Enfield project, a subsea tieback to the FPSO Ngujima-Yin, which has been producing from the Vincent oil field since 2008, remains on budget and is approaching two-thirds completion. Woodside expects first oil in mid-2019.
Initially, Greater Enfield should add an incremental 40,000 b/d to Vincent production through the FPSO. Subsea pipelay has been completed; other subsea construction works continue in the field and will be completed in 2019.
Offshore drilling also continues, with 10 top holes had been drilled and cased, and one water injector completed. The FPSONgujima-Yin has transited to the Keppel shipyard in Singapore for maintenance and modifications.
Finally, theGreater Western Flank Phase 2 (GWF-2) project is now more than 90% complete. Cost savings are being driven by drilling performance, consolidation of well construction and subsea scopes into a single campaign, and a focus on risk reduction.
Start-up is expected in 1Q 2019. GWF-2 is a subsea tieback of eight production wells to the existing Goodwyn-A platform and is designed to produce up to 800 MMf/d.
Drilling and completions activities and pipeline installation have all concluded and all subsea christmas trees have been installed. Subsea construction was due to start last month following the arrival of the primary installation vessel.
08/17/2018
