GE Oil & Gas wins $1 billion contracts in Australian LNG project

GE Oil & Gas has received contracts totaling more than $1 billion to supply equipment and services for the Ichthys liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Australia recently. GE will provide rotating equipment, including gas turbines and compressors, for a new Ichthys LNG plant at Blaydin Point, near Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory, and associated floating production storage and offloading and a central processing facility (CPF) located in the Browse Basin offshore Western Australia.

GE’s supply includes four Frame 7EA Gas Turbines and eight MR/PR Compressors for the LNG plant; 10 PGT25+G4 gas turbines and 10 compressors for upstream facilities; and 22 subsea production trees, five off-subsea manifolds, an integrated subsea control system and a 42-inch trunk line connection system. The equipment will be shipped by 2014 and INPEX expects to start producing LNG by the end of 2016.

Huge production estimates

A joint venture between INPEX (76 percent, the operator) and Total (24 percent), the Ichthys LNG project is expected to produce 8.4 million tons of LNG and 1.6 million tons of LPG per annum, along with approximately 100,000 barrels of condensate per day at peak. The joint venture is based on an estimated 40 years of gas and condensate reserves from the Browse Basin.

In addition, GE will supply subsea production systems for the offshore portion of the project as well as subsea connectors for an 889-kilometer (km) pipeline that will carry the gas produced from a CPF to the new LNG plant in Darwin. Gas from the Ichthys Field, in the Browse Basin approximately 200 km offshore of Western Australia, will undergo preliminary processing offshore to remove water and extract condensate, and will then be exported to onshore processing facilities in Darwin.