Bayu-Undan Liquids & LNG

Location

Joint Petroleum Development Area, Timor Gap, approximately 500 kilometres north-west of Darwin in 80 metres of water.

Participants

ConocoPhillips (operator)

ENI

Santos – 11.5%

INPEX

Tokyo Electric Power Company/Tokyo Gas Company

Discovered

The Bayu field was discovered in 1995 with the Bayu 1 exploration well and the Undan field was discovered later that year with the Undan 1 exploration well.

First Production

Liquids production commenced in April 2004 and LNG production commenced in February 2006.

Cost to Develop

Phase 1 gas recycling – US$1.8 billion
Phase 2 LNG production – US$1.2 billion

Facility Details

The development of the Bayu-Undan fields was implemented in two phases. The first phase was a unique world-scale offshore gas recycling project which utilised the world’s first multi-use separate propane, butane and condensate Floating Storage and Offloading vessel. The second phase was northern Australia’s first LNG production project.

Phase 1 involves the production of hydrocarbon liquids rich reservoir gas and the stripping of LPG and condensates. The lean gas is then reinjected into the reservoir. Phase 1 involved the construction of a Wellhead platform, a Drilling, Production and Processing platform and a Compression, Utilities and Quarters platform. The recovered liquids are piped to a Floating Storage and Offloading facility.

Ten production wells, four gas injection wells and 2 water disposal wells have been drilled.

The second phase of the project involves the export of dry gas to northern Australia’s first LNG production project. Production from phase 2 started in early 2006 and involves the transportation of the lean gas via a 26 inch, 500 kilometre subsea pipeline for processing in a new single train LNG plant.

The 3.7 million tonne per annum LNG plant at Wickham point, Darwin, uses ConocoPhillips’ optimised cascade LNG process technology with associated storage and marine load-out facilities.

Planning for the third phase of offshore development for the project is now underway.