The generators are designed to provide electrical power to the Curtis Island LNG facility operated by Origin Energy, ConocoPhillips and Sinopec as the Australia Pacific LNG joint venture.

While most natural gas arriving at the LNG facility will be processed and exported as LNG, a small amount will be used to power the gas turbine generators to generate the electrical power required to operate the two LNG processing trains.

Australia Pacific LNG CEO Page Maxson said the successful start-up of the first turbine was another achievement for the business, following on from the completion of the pipeline and first gas arriving at the LNG facility earlier this year.

“The complexity and scale of this accomplishment is significant and required the completion of key safety and operating systems,” Maxson said.

“Over the coming months, we will progressively test and start additional critical elements of the processing trains to bring the LNG facility on line and ready for first LNG export.”

Each of the seven gas turbine generators, constructed by Bechtel, will produce a peak output of about 15 megawatts and combined will deliver 105MW.

Bechtel Gladstone general manager Kevin Berg said the contractor was progressively completing the commissioning work on the remaining components of the first train and in parallel, constructing and commissioning the second train so the company could deliver the plant to the permanent operations team to move into full LNG production.

“Bringing gas onto site is not only important from a progress perspective, but is also very important from a safety perspective.

“We have placed a lot of effort into training everyone on site to be familiar with the additional safety measures and to understand the safety systems that have been introduced.”

BG’s Queensland Curtis LNG started production earlier this year, and Santos’ Gladstone LNG project switched on its turbines in March and is now 95% complete.

Gas sales from GLNG and APLNG are expected before the end of the year.