Santos, GDF Suez review Bonaparte FLNG

GDF Suez and Santos have moved away from developing their Bonaparte joint venture project as a floating liquefied natural gas project, saying they will now consider other options, including helping expand Inpex’s Icthys LNG project.

In a joint statement, the companies said a pre- front-end engineering and design study had demonstrated FLNG was a technically robust option, but did not meet their commercial requirements.

A Santos spokeman said the companies would now consider a number of options, but was not taking FLNG technology off the table conclusively.

“There are a number of other options that will be considered including backfill to Darwin LNG, expansion at Darwin LNG, or potentially an assisting role in the expansion of Icthys LNG, or the other option is bringing gas back to Blacktip, which is an Eni operated project, or to support domestic gas options,” the spokesman said.

“Nearly all of these options have a brownfield element to them.”

“The focus of the project really has been on floating, but it’s safe to say that ... the focus will move to concentrate on some of these alternative options.

“Floating will be considered as one of the options going forward. It will still be considered and weighed up against all the other alternatives.”

Santos received a cash consideration of $US200 million when the Bonaparte LNG joint venture was formed, and has received a full carry-on study and development costs by operator, GDF Suez. 

The joint venture previously engaged engineering firms Technip and KBR to undertake competing evaluations of the project.

The Bonaparte project covers the Petrel, Tern and Frigate natural gas fields, located 250 kilometres offshore west of Darwin in the Timor Sea. 

ConocoPhillips operates the Darwin LNG plant, processing gas from its Bayu Undan fields, also in the Timor Sea.

Inpex and Total are currently building a second LNG plant in Darwin, to process gas from the Ichthys project in the Browse basin off the Kimberley coast.