First gas from Santos’ GLNG

The Gladstone LNG (GLNG) project operated by Australian company Santos in Queensland has started production on schedule.

“We said we’d produce first LNG around the end of the third quarter, and that’s exactly what we’ve done,” downstream vice-president Rod Duke said in a video statement.

The GLNG project draws from Queensland’s coal seams in the Surat and Bowen Basins as feedstock, pipes it 420 kilometres to the plant on Curtis Island, and converts it into LNG. When fully operational, it will produce 7.8 million tonnes of LNG per year. The $18.5-billion project was announced in 2007 and construction began in 2011.

Santos operates GLNG with a 30-percent stake, with partners Malaysian state-owned Petronas (27.5 percent), France’s Total (27.5 percent) and the public utility Korea Gas Corporation (15 percent).

Santos CEO David Knox added in a company press release, “Our upstream facilities are fully operational and performing well, we’re producing LNG on Curtis Island, and we’re now looking forward to safely delivering our first LNG cargo in the coming weeks.”

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