LNGpedia

By Ben Sharples

July 31 (Bloomberg) — Chevron Corp., the second-largest U.S. oil company, said its Wheatstone liquefied natural gas project in Western Australia is one of just “a handful” of LNG ventures proposed for the Asia-Pacific region that will go ahead.

“I just anticipate that some of these other projects are going to fall off, and when they do, Wheatstone will continue to move forward and we’ll be out there in the market,” Roy Krzywosinski, managing director of the second-largest U.S. oil company’s Australian unit, said today on a conference call.

Chevron’s Wheatstone and Gorgon are among more than a dozen LNG projects proposed in Australia and Papua New Guinea by companies seeking to tap a forecast increase in demand in north Asia for cleaner-burning fuels. Chevron awarded a design and engineering contract to Bechtel Group Inc. for the development of two processing plants, or trains, for Wheatstone, it said yesterday, in a further sign that the project is progressing.

“These projects are big, they are complex, they have a lot of stakeholders and there’s just a lot of opportunities for these things to get derailed,” Krzywosinski said today. “Only a handful of these things are going to go forward.”

Natural gas consumption in the Asia Pacific region is expected to almost double by 2030, Krzywosinski said during the call. “We think Wheatstone is going to be a key piece of that whole supply equation.”

A development decision on Wheatstone is expected in 2011, Chevron said in a statement yesterday. First gas exports are targeted for 2016 and the company is actively marketing the fuel to customers, Krzywosinski said today.

Chevron plans to build two processing plants at Ashburton North, on the state’s northwest Pilbara coast, with gas sourced from the neighboring Wheatstone and Iago fields. The project will have capacity to produce 8.6 million tons of LNG a year, the company said.

LNG is natural gas chilled to liquid form for transport by ship to destinations not connected by pipeline.