Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Chevron to Have Jumbo Gas Units in Asia

by Michelle Roberts

The giant US oil company Chevron has plans to build two gas projects in Asia and it will be a multi-billion dollar project. The move by the company came in the wake of estimates that stated that there will be greater demand for gas and prices will increase. Chevron is the second biggest oil and Gas Company in the United States told that it has sanctioned the Platong Gas 2 project that will come up in Thailand and investments worth $3-billion will go in this project. The company also plans to develop a LNG or liquefied natural gas project in which it will use the gas obtained from its fully owned Wheatstone discovery located off the northwest of Australia.

Chevron has also confirmed its promise to build the huge Gorgon LNG project that will come up off northeast region of Australia. Chevron said that its Platong gas project will enhance the company’s capacity for processing by as much as 420 million cubic feet everyday in the Gulf of Thailand. The President of Chevron Asia Pacific Exploration and Production Jim Blackwell in a statement said that the Asia Pacific region is expected to be the biggest oil and gas consumer. The president further said that the twentieth century was the age of oil and the 21st century is all set to be called as the age of natural gas.

The company also told that its Wheatstone project located in the northwest coast of Australia in the Pilbara area in its beginning will have the capacity of producing as much as five million tonne liquefied natural gas each year and there is also the possibility of expansion in this project so that more natural gas can be churned out. Managing Director of Chevron Australia Roy Krzywosinski expressed that in about a year the company is expected to take decision regarding FEED or the front end engineering and design when the costs and the location is once decided.

When experts compared the project with the Pluto LNG project which is of the similar size that of the Wheatstone facility of Chevron forecast that the Wheatstone facility of Chevron can cost the company about $11 billion to develop. The western part of Australia has huge reserves of natural gas and there are many major LNG projects. The LNG facilities in operation in this part of Australia includes the 12 million tones every year capacity of the Woodside project as well as plants such as ConocoPhillips Darwin LNG plant and North West Shelf project.

The resource analyst at Macquarie Group in Sydney Andrew Blakely said that presently there may be many planned LNG projects that would come up at off the northwest Australia region however the demand for LNG is so great that the chances of oversupply of the natural gas will be rare. The Wheatstone facility of Chevron was discovered in the year 2004 and it is ninety miles off in the Carnarvon Basin and the reserves of the natural gas here are located at about 650 feet or198 m deep in the water. The company said that in the beginning it will strike 4.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves.

 

 

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