From Australia (DG): Two major offshore LNG developments off the coast of Western Australia are both still on the drawing boards of their respective operators, although one looks set to fall further behind the other.

While Woodside’s Browse (SEN 32/1) FLNG project doesn’t yet have a specific date for a Final Investment Decision (FID) or first gas, boss Peter Coleman broadly hinted at the annual APPEA Conference in Melbourne that the turn of the decade would be a champagne period for exporting the gas to energy-hungry SE Asian markets.

Although there is not an actual date on record, however, the CEO revealed that Browse was expected to enter into the Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) stage by mid-year, with a targeted FID in the second half of 2016.

Woodside last year pushed back its FEED schedule for the Browse FLNG project to work on further reducing costs, essentially placing it in an extended engineering phase. In some cases, Coleman revealed later in the week at an investors briefing, some cost categories were reduced by between 15-30%.

Wallowing increasingly further behind in Browse’s wake is fellow Australian player BHP Billiton Petroleum’s proposed ultra-deepwater Scarborough (31/14) FLNG project.

According to the major’s boss, Tim Cutt at APPEA – although he remains bullish on FLNG for developing the field off the northwest coast – the joint venture project with Esso will take a back seat at the moment to building liquid reserves.

‘Scarborough FLNG for Scarborough will work. Having dry gas is maybe not quite as economic, but it is technically more feasible,’ he said.

Back on Browse, Woodside’s Coleman went on to tell SEN on the sidelines of the conference, ‘We expect to recommend to the JV that we enter into FEED in the near future. I wouldn’t put a recommendation to the JV if we didn’t think they were aligned with it.’

He added that the FEED phase was expected to be significantly shorter than required for a stick build or a conventional land-based option. ‘It comes down to a ‘design one, build many’ concept. We already have well advanced engineering and have been out for tenders for costs. It is our view that costs will further reduce as we go through that phase,’ he said.

The current plan for Browse is for three floating liquefaction vessels to be sited on the Torosa, Brecknock and Calliance deepwater fields.

Coleman went on to hint that production would start at the beginning of the next decade, as this would be desirable during an expected market upturn. ‘We are starting to see, around 2020, gaps starting to open up in the supply-demand,’ he said.

‘In that 2020-plus sort of period, that is where we sit for Browse. I think we are coming in at a nice point in the front end of that window. The next three to four years are going to be choppy, but that generally gets worked through. You get that concertina effect as a whole bunch of production gets in. Then it just stretches out over time because there are no new projects coming on and then this substitution is having to occur because historic producers are redirecting,’ continued Coleman.

With Shell’s Prelude FLNG facility under construction at Geoje, South Korea – one of the few yards in the world with the capacity to build such large structures – Coleman said it was difficult to predict when all three planned floating production platforms for Browse might be ready for deployment.

‘Shipyards are no different to anything else in that it has a limited footprint. So we are finalising what the time is, but it’s too early to tell. We will just get focussed on the first one and then the rest will follow fairly quickly and we will optimise as we go through because they are three discreet accumulations that we are going after.’

Coleman added that it was difficult to predict reduced construction costs from the first to the third facility, but did say that about 20% saving would be a good prize to aim for.