ORIGIN Energy has agreed to sell its liquefied natural gas competitor Santos up to $3 billion of Queensland coal-seam gas for a decade at what is believed to be double current domestic prices.
The sale highlights questions on whether the proponents of $50bn worth of sanctioned LNG projects at Gladstone have drilled enough coal-seam gas wells to meet early demand from the plants and whether the individual operators have the reserves to supply the projects in the longer term.
It also shows why it is becoming extremely hard for domestic gas buyers on the east coast, and particularly in Queensland, to secure supplies beyond 2014.
Origin, which is building the Australia Pacific LNG project with ConocoPhilips, will supply the Santos-led Gladstone LNG project with 365 petajoules of gas across 10 years from 2015: about 7 per cent of its gas requirements.
The Australian
No comments:
Post a Comment