Santos will drill three production ready wells at its Beetaloo Basin prospect during the next year, as the monetisation of the Territory’s gas rich province moves closer.
Tamboran Energy alone has invested more than one-billion dollars shoring up the Beetaloo Basin for production, with other large-scale investors looking to get cash flowing in as the gas flows out.
Energy panel delegates at NT News’ Future symposium called for additional pipeline infrastructure and urged caution about a gas reservation policy, while spelling out the economic benefits the Beetaloo will deliver Territorians, the nation and region.
Tamboran Resources chief financial officer Eric Dyer said the United States experience when preparing for onshore prospects is “plan earlier, faster and larger”.
“We can look at what it’s going to do for jobs, for downstream industries, for ports, for infrastructure, for power, to power data centres, for fertilisers,” he said. “There’s so many opportunites here that all we have to do is one foot in front of the other, and I think everyone else who’s investigating while we’re investing, they’ll build there.”
Weeks away from the official opening of the Sturt Plateau Pipeline connecting Tamboran’s Shenandoah South field with the Amadeus pipeline to Darwin, builder APA’s executive general manager, gas transmission and storage Sean Fleming said the company wants to build an east-west connection.
“APA’s been very focused and there’s been quite a bit of development expenditure to get the North-East Australia Pipeline concept, a large diameter, 1000 terabyte PCF a day pipeline from the heart of the Beetaloo over to a strong point on the east coast gas grid.
“From there it can go to the big domestic units down in Sydney and Melbourne, along with further investment that we’re making in the east coast to make that happen. The biggest users on the east coast ... is through the homes, and that brings the scale. If the Beetaloo happens affordably, we bring it on at scale. We’re not ignoring the north (but) we want it to be multi-user and well-built and well-sized.
“We’ve done a lot of due diligence to get ourselves comfortable, APA has spent over $100m on developing our energy now, which is a lot for an infrastructure player.”
Energy Club chief executive Stephanie Berlin urged caution from the Commonwealth before a 20 per cent gas reservation policy was applied to the Northern Territory, given its lack of connectivity with the east coast.
“The Northern Territory doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to send gas to the east coast,” she said. “We also rely on our own domestic energy supply and have a self-regulated energy market. Unless the federal government wants to throw some money into increasing our (energy) infrastructure ... but we can’t do it alone.”
Santos chief operating officer Brett Darley questioned the introduction of “retrospective” gas reservation on customers. “Not actually knowing what the ground rules are, people are always hesitant,” he said.
Uncertainty, however, hasn’t impeded the company’s exploration phase. “In the next year, we’re going to build three wells, and these aren’t exploration wells, they’re development wells. We’re going to try and drill exactly what we would do for a full-scale development.”
Darwin Port chief executive Peter Dummett said as part of the masterplan, the asset has projects totalling up to $220m awaiting progression, including $120m for storage sheds.
“The challenge around that is a business case, and with $120m for storage sheds, that’s a lot of guaranteed throughput to get a return on that investment. When I get a successful business case together I can present that to the board, and we can get approval.”
Source: The NT News
