ConocoPhillips has submitted its development proposal for the gas and condensate Barossa field in the Timor Sea, to Australian authorities for comment.
The Barossa Area Development is expected to be a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel based project in the Bonaparte Basin, in 130-350m water depth, about 300km north of Darwin. The expected LNG and condensate production rates are about 3.7 MTPA and 1.5 MMbo a year, respectively. The life of the project is expected to be about 20 years from first gas, which is targeted for 2023. A final investment decision is targeted for 2019.
The firm's proposal has been submitted Australia's National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA), in what is the first Offshore Project Proposal (OPP) for public comment.
ConocoPhillips, in partnership with SK E&S Australia and Santos Offshore, is planning a permanently moored FPSO, with a subsea production system and supporting in-field subsea infrastructure in the Barossa field (petroleum retention lease NT/RL5).
The FPSO facility will separate the natural gas and condensate extracted from the field with the condensate exported directly from the FPSO to offtake tankers and the dry gas transported via a 260-290km-long subsea gas export pipeline for onshore processing.
It is proposed to connect the new subsea gas export pipeline to the existing Bayu-Undan to Darwin gas export pipeline, which feeds the onshore Darwin LNG facility at Wickham Point, in the Northern Territory. Gas from the Barossa field would replace the existing supply from the Bayu-Undan Field following its anticipated depletion in 2022.
Potential future staged development in the smaller Caldita field to the south in retention lease NT/RL6 has also been allowed for in the development concept.
Introduced in 2014, an OPP is a regulatory permissioning document required for all proposed offshore projects in Commonwealth waters. It covers offshore activities including production drilling, the construction and installation of facilities and infrastructure such as pipelines, the recovery of petroleum and associated operation of facilities, through to decommissioning.
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