Industry News

The Independent Scientific Inquiry into Hydraulic Fracturing in the Northern Territory (the Inquiry) released its Final Report today. Read the full update.

The Independent Scientific Inquiry into Hydraulic Fracturing of Onshore Unconventional Reservoirs in the Northern Territory (Inquiry) presented its Final Report (Final Report) to the Northern Territory Government today.

The Final Report comprises three separate documents: the Final Report (Book 1); the Appendices (Book 2); and the Executive Summary (Book 3). The Final Report contains 135 recommendations.

The Final Report represents the culmination of 15 months’ of work by the Inquiry, during which time the Panel:

• met 12 times;
• held 52 community forums, including 37 in regional and remote areas, and 15 in urban centres;
• conducted 151 public hearings;
• published 31 Community Updates; and
• received 1257 submissions.

The Chair of the Inquiry, Justice Rachel Pepper, said “this Report provides recommendations to mitigate to acceptable levels the identified risks associated with any onshore shale gas development in the NT if the Government lifts the moratorium.”

“No industry is without risk, and any onshore shale gas industry is no exception. However, it is the Panel’s opinion, expressed in the Final Report, that if all of the recommendations are implemented, the identified risks associated with any onshore shale gas industry can be mitigated or reduced to an acceptable level, and in some cases, the risks can be eliminated.”

Justice Pepper said that while the Inquiry’s scope was broader than that of previous inquiries into unconventional gas in the Northern Territory, the Inquiry nevertheless built upon the previous bodies of work. In addition, this Inquiry had a mandate to consult widely, unlike previous inquiries and reviews.

“The Inquiry has taken its mandate to consult widely very seriously through its stakeholder engagement, live-streamed public hearings and community forums, held throughout the Territory.”

Justice Pepper said the Panel has made findings and recommendations in its Final Report based on the best most recent and relevant available evidence, which included the views of the community expressed during the consultation process.

In addition to strengthening many of the recommendations made in the Draft Final Report, the Final Report includes:

• an implementation Chapter, which states clearly that all of the recommendations in the Final Report must be implemented;
• greater clarity on the timing of the implementation of the recommendations; and
• the inclusion of a requirement that there be no net increase in greenhouse gas emissions in Australia as a consequence of the development of any onshore shale gas industry in the Northern Territory.

In releasing the Final Report, her Honour emphasised that it was not the role of the Inquiry to recommend whether or not the moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the Northern Territory be lifted.

“Today the Inquiry delivered its Final Report to the Government and in doing so fulfilled its Terms of Reference. The decision whether or not to retain the ban on hydraulic fracturing in the Northern Territory is a political decision that rests with the Government alone.”

Justice Pepper thanked the people of the Northern Territory for their enthusiastic engagement with the Inquiry. She also thanked the Taskforce supporting the Inquiry for their considerable assistance.

The Inquiry’s Final Report is available to download at www.frackinginquiry.nt.gov.au

AUSTRALIA’S largest brewer Carton & United Breweries (CUB) has signed a 12-year power purchase agreement for 74,000 megawatt hours per year of solar energy for its manufacturing plants.

German company BayWa will provide the power from its 112MW Karadoc solar farm in Mildura, Victoria, which is currently under construction by Melbourne-based Beon Energy Solutions. 

 BayWa has already constructed a 4km grid connection for the plant. 

CUB CEO Jan Craps hailed the deal as significant step toward its vision of securing 100% of its electricity from renewables. 

"As one of Australia's first and leading manufacturing businesses, we have a responsibility to ensure we play our part in tackling climate change and a range of environmental challenges," Craps said.  

CUB is also moving toward onsite solar generation, which will see solar panels on the roofs at each of its breweries, and says it is Yatala brewery is a world leader in water efficiency. 

Craps said the investment with BayWA also stacked up economically, with CUB now expected to pay a reduced price to power its operations. 

"Moving to renewable energy will ensure that we have certainty of supply and pricing, something that is incredibly important for a manufacturing business like ours."

CUB sites will remain connected to the grid, allowing excess capacity to be fed back into the system.

CUB are a supporting partner of Energy Club NT.

ConocoPhillips and Santos are pushing ahead with their $500 million plan to develop the Barossa gas field off Australia's north coast to replace declining supplies for Darwin LNG, with Santos declaring that Sunrise gas has "virtually no chance" of being processed there despite this week's milestone treaty with Timor-Leste.

The treaty, signed in New York on Tuesday US time, only allows for gas from the Sunrise field to be processed in either Conoco's Darwin LNG plant or at a new LNG plant in Timor-Leste, which the Sunrise partners have always ruled out as too risky.

But Conoco and its partners in the Barossa venture, Santos and Korea's SK Group, are resolved on Barossa gas as the lead candidate to replace the declining gas from the Bayu-Undan offshore field to supply Darwin LNG, with the field to be empty by 2022-23.

Santos, which also owns a stake in Darwin LNG, believes without doubt that Barossa is "the only field that can provide certainty on backfill for DLNG and deliver gas when DLNG will need it in the early 2020s," said Bruce Clement, head of conventional oil & gas.

"As one of the owners of DLNG, we want that certainty and we want to know that gas is definitely on the way to keep that plant full as Bayu-Undan comes off plateau," Mr Clement said.

Read more here in the Financial Review.

Follow: @FinancialReview on Twitter | financialreview on Facebook

The signing of a landmark sea boundary treaty between Australia and Timor-Leste is set to revive stalled discussions over the lucrative Sunrise gas project, but operator Woodside Petroleum immediately signalled that the tough work on agreeing how to develop the resource is still to come.

Woodside said it is "disappointing" the conciliation process over boundaries and Sunrise failed to strike a deal on the development design after the treaty apparently ruled out its favoured option of a floating LNG plant.

The treaty, signed in New York on Wednesday Australian time by senior ministers of the two nations, represents a major shake-up in the administration of oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea.

It will do away with the long-standing Joint Petroleum Development Area, a region jointly administered between the two nations, shifting resources in that area wholly into Timor-Leste territory.

But most significantly for Woodside, the terms of the deal only cover two onshore options – either Timor-Leste or Darwin – for processing the 5.13 trillion cubic feet of gas from the large Sunrise field. The venture, in which Shell and ConocoPhillips are major partners, also involves about 226 million barrels of oil-like condensates.

The idea of offshore processing through a circa $US13 billion ($16.6 billion) floating LNG plant, the concept most recently favoured by Woodside, is not covered in the treaty nor in the Permanent Court of Arbitration's conciliation agreement. The treaty was agreed after a long-running dispute on sea boundaries between the two nations which forced the Sunrise partners to put their project on the back burner several years ago.

Read more here.

Follow: @FinancialReview on Twitter | financialreview on Facebook

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden said Wednesday that climate change is the biggest issue facing the energy sector, encouraging the European oil major to invest more in cleaner-burning gas and renewable energy.

Shell aims to cut its carbon footprint in half by 2050 while shifting its roughly 50-50 oil and gas balance to a portfolio that's closer to 70 percent gas, van Beurden said at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston. Shell already is the world's leader in liquefied natural gas.

"There's no other issue with the potential to disrupt our industry on such a deep and fundamental level," van Beurden said of climate change and the need to help meet the Paris climate accord goals, even though the United States plans to split from the agreement under the Trump administration.

The emphasis goes beyond making Shell's own operations cleaner and more efficient because most of the emissions come from Shell's products after they are sold. So Shell intends to invest more in offshore wind farms, biofuels, carbon capture projects and the planting of trees and forests.

Read more here

View NAB Trade video interview with Kevin Gallagher here.

PCNT members held a special resolution meeting lat night prior to the February Industry dinner. Member unanimously agreed for an organisation name change to Energy Club NT to reflect the change in industry trends and language and also open the Club's remit to include alternative energy generation, transmission and supply.

An exciting change for the new year with more details to be announced once the administration of changes has been approved.

A SUBSEA well intervention at Northern Oil & Gas Australia’s Laminaria field is on track to be carried out in April or May this year, with contractor AGR close to completing a year’s worth of planning.

The project in the Timor Sea will employ Stena Drilling's Stena Clyde semi-submersible rig over an estimated 30-day period. 

NOGA operates the Laminaria and Corallina oil fields and associated infrastructure, including the Northern Endeavour floating production and storage unit. 

AGR is providing full well management services for the intervention, including engineering and design, preparation of the operations management plan and other regulatory documents, and supervision and execution. 

The contract is one of a number of subsea maintenance campaigns it has managed for NOGA. 

AGR Asia-Pacific business development manager Andy Perchard said the company was glad to be continuing the working relationship. 

"We're also looking forward to working with Stena again, having used the Clyde for a number of exploration and abandonment campaigns in Australia in recent years," Perchard said, adding that AGR was confident the well intervention would be a huge success. 

Australia accounts for 50 of the 530 wells AGR has drilled globally.

Source: EnergyNewsBulletin.net

East Timor and Australia have reached an agreement for a treaty on their disputed maritime border and on a "pathway" to develop the giant Greater Sunrise offshore gas fields, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague says.

Under the agreement, the share of revenue from the offshore gas field will differ depending on downstream benefits that arise from "different development concepts", the statement released following talks in Kuala Lumpur said.

The agreement would establish a maritime boundary in the Timor Sea for the first time.

Australia had sought a boundary aligned with its continental shelf, but East Timor argued the border should lie half way between it and Australia — placing much of the Greater Sunrise fields under its control.

The long-running dispute had led the owners of Greater Sunrise — Woodside Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and Japan's Osaka Gas — to shelve the project.

The fields are estimated to hold 144 billion cubic metres of gas and 226 million barrels of condensates, which analysts have previously estimated could be worth up to $50 billion.

However, development could be at least a decade away, with Woodside looking at the latter half of the next decade.

Read more on ABC website here.

Oil and gas will account for over half of the world’s energy by 2040, according to BP plc’s latest Energy Outlook.

The outlook’s ‘evolving transition’ scenario highlights that demand for oil will grow over much of the period to 2040 before plateauing in later years. All the demand growth is said to come from emerging economies, with the growth in supply driven by US tight oil in the early part of the outlook. OPEC is said to take over from the late 2020s as Middle East producers adopt a strategy of growing market share.

The transport sector will continue to dominate global oil demand, according to BP, accounting for more than half of the overall growth. Most of the growth in energy demand from transport, which flattens off towards the end of the outlook, comes from non-road (largely air, marine, and rail) and trucks, with small increases from cars and motorbikes. After 2030, the main source of growth in the demand for oil is from non-combusted uses, particularly as a feedstock for petrochemicals.

Natural gas demand is anticipated to grow strongly over the period, according to the scenario, overtaking coal as the second largest source of energy. By 2040, the US is said to account for almost one quarter of global gas production, with global LNG supplies more than doubling.

“Under most scenarios we look at oil demand continues to grow over the next 15-20 years, the underlying story there is fast growth in developing economies,” BP Group Chief Economist Spencer Dale said in a BBC Radio4 interview on Wednesday.

BP Group Chief Executive Bob Dudley said BP’s strategy has to be resilient and adaptable to significant changes in the energy industry.

“This outlook considers the possible implications of some of these changes and helps inform our long-term planning. We cannot predict where these changes will take us, but we can use this knowledge to get fit and ready to play our role in meeting the energy needs of tomorrow,” Dudley said in a company statement.

See RigZone article here.