Inpex wraps up Ichthys gas pipeline

Japan’s Inpex has finished laying the gas export pipeline for its Ichthys LNG project offshore Australia, the company said on Thursday. Work on the 890-kilometre pipeline started in June 2014 and was performed using Saipem’s Semac-1 barge and Castorone pipelay vessel. Inpex has touted the pipeline as the longest subsea pipeline in the southern hemisphere and the third-longest in the world.

The pipeline connects the Ichthys gas and condensate, located around 220 kilometres offshore Western Australia in Browse Basin, to onshore gas processing facilities at Bladin Point, near Darwin in the Northern Territory. When the project comes on stream in mid-2017, it is expected to produce around 8.9 million tonnes of LNG and 1.6 million tonnes of LPG per year, in addition to a peak production of more than 100,000 barrels of condensate per day, which will be shipped directly from an onsite floating production, storage and offloading vessel.

The Ichthys field was discovered in 2000, and is estimated to hold around 368 bcm (13 tcf) of gas and more than 500 million barrels of condensate. The project is a joint venture between operator Inpex (63.445-percent), Total (30-percent), Taiwain’s state-owned CPC Corporation (2.625-percent) and Japanese companies Tokyo Gas (1.575-percent), Osaka Gas (1.2-percent), Chubu Electric Power (0.735-percent) and Toho Gas (0.42-percent).

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