Darwin To Host Inpex LNG Plant  

The Australian reports that Japanese company Inpex has decided to build its LNG export facility for the Ichthys field in the Browse Basin in Darwin instead of in Western Australia - Northern Territory wins $24bn Japanese gas plant.

ONE of the biggest private investments in Australian history was clinched yesterday when Japanese gas giant Inpex chose Darwin harbour as the site for a multi-billion-dollar LNG plant that will process eight million tonnes of gas piped from the Browse Basin off the northern West Australian coast.

The announcement that Inpex planned to pipe gas 850km across the Timor Sea in favour of processing the LNG at a hub in the Kimberley ended months of competition between the Northern Territory and Western Australia. The deal cements Darwin's status as a major industrial and commercial centre, but WA's loss was greeted with bitter disappointment by the Kimberley's Aboriginal Land Council, which had pinned its hopes on the plant as a way of out of poverty for remote-living indigenous people.

Inpex's Japanese president Naoki Kuroda, announcing the deal in Darwin yesterday, said that at the expected gas processing rate of 1.6 million tonnes of LNG per annum, the plant would produce the equivalent of 50 per cent of Australia's current [LNG] production.

Mr Kuroda said the NT Government had been able to provide certainty for the $24billion investment, with the Japanese Government pushing to meet a tight deadline to guarantee the security of Japan's future gas supply.

Federal Minister for Resources and Energy Martin Ferguson said yesterday the project was "potentially the biggest investment in Australia's history" and would cement Australia's world standing as an "energy superpower". "It will prove to be side-by-side with the expansion of the Olympic Dam in South Australia," Mr Ferguson said.