LNG Demand Supports Australian Projects, Conoco Says  

Bloomberg has a report on the debate over whether or not there is sufficient demand for Queensland's planned CSG to LNG plants in the medium term - LNG Demand Supports Australian Projects, Conoco Says .

Global liquefied natural gas demand will prove strong enough to support development of proposed LNG projects in Australia’s Queensland state, a ConocoPhillips executive said. “Demand will be there going forward,” Ryan Lance, senior vice president for international exploration and production at the second-largest U.S. oil refiner, said in Darwin today. “LNG will be a fuel for the future” as pressure grows on countries to reduce emissions of harmful greenhouse gases, he said.

Conoco’s venture with Origin Energy Ltd. is the biggest of the four most-advanced projects aiming to convert gas extracted from coal seams into LNG near the central Queensland city of Gladstone. The partners target the first exports in 2014. There are some 10 LNG projects in Australia and Papua New Guinea seeking to tap a forecast increase in demand in north Asia for cleaner fuels, even as the global recession temporarily curbs growth in energy use.

LNG “supply is there, the demand is not there,” Fereidun Fesharaki, head of Honolulu-based consultant FACTS Global Energy, said at the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference in Darwin. “Not all coal seam gas projects will go ahead,” he told reporters after the speech.

China, the second-largest energy-consuming nation, is building more than 10 LNG terminals on its eastern coast to meet a government target of doubling the use of the cleaner-burning fuel.