Australia's biggest-ever LNG deal signed  

The SMH reports that BG has signed a large coal seam gas export deal with China's - Gas: Australia's biggest-ever deal inked.

In what is Australia’s largest trade deal, a Chinese company has signed off on the purchase of about $60 billion worth of liquified natural gas (LNG) from a Queensland project.

The signing was also the world’s first fully termed sales contract for LNG sourced from coal seam gas (CSG), according to a statement from Resources Minister Martin Ferguson, who witnessed the signing in Beijing today.

The deal was between Britain’s BG Group, which owns the CSG fields, and the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC).

‘‘This deal makes Australia the world leader in the coal seam gas-based LNG industry and it brings us one important step closer to opening up a new LNG province on Australia’s east coast in Queensland,’’ Mr Ferguson said in a statement. ‘‘It also further demonstrates Australia’s attractiveness as an internationally competitive and safe destination for global capital.’’

CNOOC’s 20-year deal with BG Group was proposed in May 2009 and will allow CNOOC to buy 3.6 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) of LNG from the British firm’s Queensland Curtis CSG-to-LNG project near Gladstone.

The amount is about half of the output expected during the first phase of the project, which is slated to commence production in 2014 and will cost more than $10 billion to develop.

CNOOC was involved in China’s first purchase of Australian LNG from the Woodside Petroleum-operated North West Shelf in Western Australia in 2006.