Design
go-ahead for offshore Victorian gas field
Posted: 25 February 2004
Front end engineering work to develop the estimated $200 million
Casino gas field offshore western Victoria, has been given approval
by Santos Limited and its joint venture partners in the acreage,
AWE and Mitsui.
Santos, as Operator of the Casino field, announced on behalf of
the VIC/P44 joint venture today that expenditure had been approved
for the completion by the end of 2004 of Front End Engineering and
Design (FEED) studies and regulatory approvals.
Pending a final investment decision, Santos said the FEED go-ahead
would ensure the development schedule delivered first gas sales
from Casino in the March 2006 quarter.
The Joint Venture has already secured a 12-year gas sales agreement
with TXU Australia to supply gas from the Casino field, discovered
in September 2002, 29 kilometres southwest of Port Campbell and
250 kilometres southwest of Melbourne.
The Gas Sales Agreement is for an initial sales volume of up to
293 petajoules (PJ) of gas from the permit, with an option to extend
this volume by a further 200 PJ.
Casino is estimated to have current recoverable reserves of between
200 – 270 billion cubic feet of gas.
Santos’ Managing Director Mr John Ellice-Flint said, “The
successful sale of gas from the Casino field to TXU was a ground-breaking
commercial contract. We were able to finalise the sales contract
with TXU prior to drilling the second appraisal well on the field.
Casino is also a fine example of cycle time reduction with only
13 weeks between reaching total depth of the second appraisal well
in November 2003 and committing to FEED”.
Commercialisation of the field is expected to include the drilling
of two development wells, sub-sea infrastructure and the installation
of a pipeline from the field to underneath the coastline near Port
Campbell, continuing to TXU’s Iona gas processing plant.
The Commonwealth and Victorian government authorities have formally
approved the environmental assessment processes for the development
of the Casino Project.
The joint venture is confident these processes can be adequately
met to receive formal environmental approvals prior to the end of
2004, but more importantly to protect the environment in which we
intend to operate.
The Victorian Minister for Planning has also formally advised that
with some conditions, preparation of an Environmental Effects Statement
under the Environmental Effects Act is not required.
Participants in VIC/P44 are:
Santos Limited (Operator) 50.0 per cent
Peedamullah Petroleum Ltd (AWE) 25.0 per cent
Mittwell Energy Resources Pty Ltd (Mitsui) 25.0 per cent
Santos Limited is a major Australian oil and gas exploration and
production company with interests in all Australian hydrocarbon
provinces. The Santos Group also operates in the USA, Indonesia
and PNG.
For more information see www.santos.com
Posted by Richard Price,
Editor Pipeline Magazine
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