The pipeline, which Saipem Australia constructed, will now be progressively filled with gas, section by section, with first gas into the Santos GLNG plant scheduled for later this year.
Once commissioned and in operation, the pipeline will transport up to 40 million cubic metres of gas a day from the project’s gas fields to its liquefaction plant on Curtis Island off Gladstone, where it will be cooled to -161C and shipped to customers as LNG.
The project has sales and purchase agreements with joint venture partners Petronas and Kogas for 7.2Mtpa of LNG in aggregate.
Santos vice president downstream GLNG Rod Duke said the project’s gas fields across the Bowen and Surat basins and construction of the LNG plant at Curtis Island were on track for first LNG next year.
The pipeline included a 4.3km under-sea tunnel from the mainland to Curtis Island, 36,000 segments of pipe, seven pipeline storage areas, four camps in the Arcadia Valley, Fairview field, Bauhinia and Kilburnie, one primary contractor and over 50 subcontractors; along with individual land access agreements with 120 landholders for 142 properties.
Construction on the pipeline in 2012, since which time more than six million hours have been completed on it, including welding more than 36,000 segments of 1.05m diameter pipe, weighing over 250,000 tonnes.
GLNG, a joint venture between operator Santos (30%), Petronas (27.5%), Total (27.5%) and Kogas (15%), was sanctioned in 2011, with an estimated gross capital cost of $18.5 billion from final investment decision to the end of next year when the second train is expected to be ready for start-up.
Forty-two wells were spudded in the GLNG acreage in the second quarter this year, in line with this year’s drilling plan, including 27 development wells in the Fairview field and 15 appraisal wells.
While analysts have expressed concern about Queensland’s LNG projects’ ability to source enough CSG to fill the trains, Santos said the deliverability of existing wells in Fairview “continues to exceed expectations”, with a current average optimum of 2.2 terajoules a day per well from the 183 interconnected wells, with a total gross field well capacity of 400TJ/d at the end of May.
“The Roma field continues to perform in line with expectations, with 52 development wells on-line and an additional 23 pilot wells on-line to assess coal productivity in potential future development areas,” Santos said.
“Commissioning of the first upstream hub (Fairview 05) is underway. Construction of the Fairview 04 hub was completed during the quarter and the Roma 02 hub is substantially complete.
“Commissioning of the pipeline compressor station has begun and construction of the 120km Comet Ridge to Wallumbilla pipeline loop is now more than 50% complete.
“During the [second] quarter, GLNG executed two third-party gas supply agreements for an aggregate quantity of 85PJ.”
