November 24, 2009 - 12:39PM
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AAP
Woodside Petroleum Ltd says it could make a final decision to proceed with its Browse gas joint venture in Western Australia's Kimberley region by 2011.
"Woodside believes that Browse should go into the basics of design, and into FEED (front-end engineering and design) next year, 2010," chief executive Don Voelte told an investor briefing on Tuesday.
"And Woodside believes we can achieve FID (final investment decision) as early as 2011.
"So far as we're concerned, Browse is ready to go."
Mr Voelte said Woodside still preferred to feed gas from the Browse project through a planned shared-user liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing hub at James Price Point, near Broome.
Opponents to such a use of this site - an environmentally sensitive area - have suggested the Browse partners feed gas from the project into Woodside's existing North West Shelf facilities at Karratha.
Woodside has rejected this, saying it is not viable to pipe the Browse Basin gas to Karratha, some 1,000km away in the Pilbara region.
However, joint venture partners BHP Billiton Ltd, BP, Chevron and Shell have not yet ratified the James Price Point site.
"Woodside's preferred option, as you know, is the Kimberleys," Mr Voelte said.
"It is the earliest start-up due to limited de-bottle necking ...
"Further, we believe the Kimberleys onshore project isn't particularly complicated as far as LNG projects go.
"The offshore is about the same for both concepts, both the Karratha concept and the Kimberley concept, although there are scaling issues, obviously because of the slow ramp-up of the Karratha option.
"The Kimberley option is moving quickly in area of agreements in approvals."
© 2009 AAP
Source: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-business/woodside-mulls-early-decision-on-browse-20091124-jem2.html?
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