A new era in the development of natural gas reserves is about to emerge in Western Australia.

The sheer magnitude and size of the Gorgon LNG Development is one thing, but the international significance and environmental control measures make this project even more impressive.

Gorgon is a 50-25-25 joint venture between Chevron as operator, ExxonMobil and Shell, respectively.

Chevron Australia Managing Director Roy Krzywosinski said “The Gorgon Project is globally and nationally significant with a resource base of more than 40 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of gas and an estimated economic life of at least 40 years from the time of start-up.”

Gas from the greater Gorgon area gas fields will be produced from subsea wells, in up to 1,300 metres of deepwater, and transported to Barrow Island, located off the Pilbara coast, via pipeline for processing. This circumvents the need for offshore platforms.

The project involves the construction of three LNG and domestic gas processing plants on Barrow Island each with a capacity of 5 million tonnes per annum (MMt/a) – totalling 15 MMt/a – and supplying gas to the Asia Pacific and Western Australian markets.

The proposed gas processing facilities will be located on a 300 hectare Barrow Island site. The facilities will include the LNG plant, condensate handling facilities, carbon dioxide injection facilities and associated utilities.

Environmental approvals process

The Western Australian Government gave its conditional environmental approval in July this year followed by Federal Government approval in late August.

The approvals were welcomed by Mr Krzywosinski.

“The Gorgon LNG Project has been deliberately sited to avoid areas of particular conservation significance and the three train Gorgon project will have minimal additional environmental impact when compared with the already-approved two train project.

"The project has strict quarantine conditions to protect the unique flora and fauna on Barrow Island. Having operated an oil field on the island for the past 45 years, Chevron is well placed to implement the system," he said.

Commenting on the rigorous environmental assessment process, Chevron Greater Gorgon Area General Manager Colin Beckett told ABC Radio “[Environmental authorities] are rigorous, they are demanding of us as they should be because of the activities we are undertaking. We have planned this into the project execution plans.

“So these are not a set of new things that we're going to have to draft onto the project now, these are sort of deeply embedded into the way we're going to go about this project.”

Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett said in an interview that he had visited the site at Barrow Island, and “any impact on the species that are listed under my act could be, and would be, properly managed in terms of conditions.

“I’ve applied a fairly significant and quite a strict set of conditions for the company, which they have indicated they are willing to meet.

“I’m confident that we won’t have an impact on matters of national environmental significance.”

A key feature of this development is the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Injection Project.

Carbon capture and storage

The Gorgon joint venture partners plan to store naturally occurring carbon dioxide extracted from the natural gas – as a routine part of the gas processing operations – by injecting it into the Dupuy Formation, more than 2 kilometres below Barrow Island. This will reduce the emissions from the project by approximately 40 per cent.

The Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Injection Project represents one of the world’s largest emissions abatement projects and has the potential to position Western Australia and Australia as a world leader in this technology.

Technical assessments indicate that reservoir CO2 injection into the Dupuy Formation will effectively trap the CO2.

Chevron has said it is committed to sharing information from the monitoring program with other industries, and hopes this will assist in building a greater understanding around this important technology.

The company hopes that, combined with current best practice in plant design, CO2 injection will make Gorgon one of the world’s most greenhouse gas efficient projects and help Australia respond to international concerns on greenhouse gas emissions. The government is working to establish regulatory frameworks that support and encourage the deployment of this technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Gorgon’s got the gas

The Gorgon joint venture partners have already signed international sales and purchase agreements to export LNG from the offshore project.

ExxonMobil will supply India’s Petronet and China’s PetroChina with LNG from its share, and Chevron will supply LNG to Osaka Gas, Tokyo Gas, and Korean gas companies CS Caltex and KOGAS.

Federal Minister for Resources, Energy and Tourism Martin Ferguson said “These are massive contracts that will generate economic growth, jobs and prosperity for the nation for decades to come.”

He said the sales agreements would “firmly cement Australia’s vital role as a clean energy supplier to the Asia Pacific, securing the sustainable economic future of our neighbours”.

Gas for the future

With Gorgon signed off and underway, it is easy to understand the air of excitement in Western Australia’s oil and gas industry. A brand new project is on the way that is expected to set new benchmarks in engineering design and environmental management.