The North West Shelf Venture, situated in the north-west of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to t ...

, is Australia's largest resource development project. It involves the

extraction of petroleum Petroleum is a fossil fuel that can be drawn from beneath the earth's surface. Reservoirs of petroleum was formed through the mixture of plants, algae, and sediments in shallow seas under high pressure. Petroleum is mostly recovered from oil dri ...

(mostly

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbon d ...

and condensate) at offshore production platforms, onshore processing and export of

liquefied natural gas Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the vol ...

, and production of natural gas for industrial, commercial and domestic use within the state.

Project

With investments totalling $25 billion since the early 1980s, the project is the largest resource development in Australian history. In the late 1980s, it was the largest engineering project in the world. The Venture is underpinned by huge hydrocarbon reserves within the

Carnarvon Basin The Carnarvon Basin is a geological basin located in the north west of Western Australia which extends from the Dampier Archipelago to the Murchison bioregion, and is the main geological feature that makes up the North West Shelf. The onshore ...

, with only about one-third of the Venture's estimated total reserves of of gas produced to date. It is owned by a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acces ...

of six partners BHP, BP,

Chevron Chevron (often relating to V-shaped patterns) may refer to: Science and technology * Chevron (aerospace), sawtooth patterns on some jet engines * Chevron (anatomy), a bone * '' Eulithis testata'', a moth * Chevron (geology), a fold in rock la ...

Shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

, Woodside Petroleum and a 50:50 joint venture between

Mitsubishi The is a group of autonomous Japanese multinational companies in a variety of industries. Founded by Yatarō Iwasaki in 1870, the Mitsubishi Group historically descended from the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company which existed from 1870 ...

and

Mitsui & Co is one of the largest ''sogo shosha'' (general trading companies) in Japan; it is part of the Mitsui Group. History The company was established in 1876 with 16 members including the founder, Takashi Masuda. As Japan's international trading w ...

with each holding an equal one-sixth shareholding. Along with being a joint venture partner, Woodside is the project operator on behalf of the other participants.

Assets

The venture currently has three currently active offshore facilities. A fourth, North Rankin B is under construction: * North Rankin A (NRA) :Commissioned in 1984, North Rankin A was the then-largest gas production platform in the world, capable of producing 1,815 million cubic feet (51,400,000 m³) of gas per day and up to of condensate. Modifications have increased the facility's capacity by 50% and it remains one of the world's largest gas platforms. :It is located 135 km north-west of Karratha and can accommodate more than 120 people. It services 25 production wells in the North Rankin and Perseus fields. * Goodwyn A (GWA) :At a cost of $2bn, the platform was, when commissioned in early 1995, the largest single offshore oil and gas investment ever made in Australia. :In late 2001, the Goodwyn platform was linked to the Echo/Yodel gas and condensate fields via a 23 km pipeline. Hydrocarbons from the Goodwyn field are transferred via a subsea pipeline to North Rankin before being transported to Karratha for processing. It is designed for up to 30 production wells (19 currently), including five re-injection wells. It accommodates 137 people. :It has a production capacity of 32,000

tonne The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...

s of gas per day. * Cossack Pioneer Floating Production Storage and Off-Loading (FPSO) :The facility was commissioned in late 1995 and produces up to of

crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude ...

which is offloaded via a flexible line to oil tankers moored astern. Located 34 km east of the North Rankin A platform, it is moored to a riser turret which is connected by flexible flowlines to subsea production wells at the Wanaea, Cossack, Lambert and Hermeson gas fields. :It has a storage capacity of of oil and a production capacity of of oil per day. :In May 2008, Woodside announced plans to replace the 13-year-old vessel with a view to extending oil output to 2025-2030. The condensate is transported to the Burrup Peninsula (

Murujuga Murujuga, formerly known as Dampier Island and today usually known as the Burrup Peninsula, is in the Dampier Archipelago, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, containing the town of Dampier. The Dampier Rock Art Precinct, which covers ...

) onshore facility on the mainland 130 km away by two and undersea pipes. Other assets include: * LNG and condensate loading facilities at Withnell Bay at Karratha including jetties, LNG storage tanks and other infrastructure, and supported by Dampier Port Authority. * Karratha gas plant. In 2008, the facility capacity was increased to 16.3 million tonnes per year with the commissioning of a fifth, 4.4 million tonnes per year LNG production train. As well as processing gas for export, the facility supplies domestic supplies to consumers and businesses in Western Australia. The facility also processes condensate which is extracted from the gaseous hydrocarbons during processing. * A fleet of nine purpose built LNG

cargo ships A cargo ship or freighter is a merchant ship that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the world's seas and oceans each year, handling the bulk of international trade. Cargo ships are usu ...

. The ships are powered using gas vapour from the storage tanks on board which is used to run steam turbines. Each of the ships is equipped with four spherical tanks giving a total capacity of 125,000 cubic metres (138,500 cubic metres in the case of the most recently delivered ''Northwest Swan'') and utilise docking facilities at the Karratha gas plant's Withnell Bay terminal. A subsidiary company, North West Shelf Shipping Service Company Pty Ltd manages the shipping operations. In March 2008, the partners approved a A$5 billion North Rankin 2 project which will underpin supply commitments to customers in Asia beyond 2013. The project will recover remaining low pressure gas from the ageing North Rankin and Perseus gas fields using compression. It will include the installation of a new platform (North Rankin B) which will stand in about 125 metres of water and will be connected by a 100-metre bridge to the existing North Rankin A platform.

Production and sales

The first LNG shipments went to Japan in 1989. Two hundred shipments per year (about one shipment every 1.5 days) in the purpose built LNG carriers totalling more than seven million tons are made around the world. Markets include sales to long term customers in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

and spot buyers in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. To date, the venture has produced more than 1000 cargoes of light crude oil (

natural gas condensate Natural-gas condensate, also called natural gas liquids, is a low-density mixture of hydrocarbon liquids that are present as gaseous components in the raw natural gas produced from many natural gas fields. Some gas species within the raw natu ...

). Condensate is sold on the international energy market. In 2002, a contract was signed to supply 3 million tonnes of LNG a year from the North West Shelf Venture to China. The contract was worth $25 billion: between $700 million and $1 billion a year for 25 years.

The Age ''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria (Australia), Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Austral ...

, 30 September 2017
How Australia blew its future gas supplies
by Tony Wright The price was guaranteed not to increase until 2031, and, as international LNG prices were increasing, by 2015 China was paying one-third as were Australian consumers. The venture is Western Australia's largest single producer of domestic gas providing about 65% of total State production. Pipeline gas is processed at the consortium's Karratha facility, and transported to customers in southern Western Australia via the 1530 km Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline. A subsidiary company, North West Shelf Gas Pty Ltd markets the domestic gas component to customers in Western Australia through private contracts and sales to

Alinta Alinta was an Australian energy infrastructure company. It has grown from a small, Western Australia-based gas distributor and retailer to the largest energy infrastructure company in Australia. It was bought in 2007 by a consortium including ...

Engineering heritage award

The first two phases of the project received an Engineering Heritage International Marker from

Engineers Australia Engineers Australia (EA) is an Australian professional body and not-for-profit organisation whose purpose is to advance the science and practice of engineering for the benefit of the community. Engineers Australia is Australia's recognized org ...

as part of its Engineering Heritage Recognition Program.

Project

Assets

Production and sales

Engineering heritage award

See also

References

Further reading