In a pitch to local suppliers as part of a bid to ensure Australian content is maximised in the development, Drayton said Equus was still planning to provide third party gas into one of the three LNG projects in Western Australia.

The most obvious landing is the Chevron-operated Wheatstone plant at Ashburton North, near Onslow, which was previously seeking third party gas, however there is scope to backfill into the North West Shelf facility via the North Rankin facilities.

Early speculation was that Equus could underwrite a new train at Pluto, but given gas prices have tumbled that seems unlikely now.

Hess owns 100% of WA-390-P, which is host to eight gas fields discovered in drilling between 2010 and 2012. The company also has interests in the adjacent WA-477-P, WA-518-P and WA-519-P.

Hess clearly likes the area, given its jaw-dropping bid of 16 wells to win control of WA-390-P in

the central Exmouth Sub-basin, trumping the Greater Gorgon partners - Chevron, Shell and

ExxonMobil.

The resulting work program was for 18 wells drilled for 14 gas discoveries, and while Hess has never discussed the size of its discoveries, it is now talking about how it can develop the fields, which are about 200km from Exmouth.

While there are no public numbers, it has been speculated that Equus is estimated to hold 1-3 trillion cubic feet of reserves in several fields.

The gas discoveries have been partially appraised and appear to contain clean, contaminant-free gas with good flow rates.

The eight discovered fields - Mentorc, Bravo and Nimblefoot in Cretaceous strata; Chester and Rimfire in the Cretaceous/Triassic; Glenloth and Briseis in Triassic and Glencoe in the Jurassic- sit in 1200m of water, and will support a central semi-submersible processing facility using a subsea hub and spoke arrangement.

The three Cretaceous fields have the highest condensate to gas ratio, 40 barrels per million standard cubic feet of gas, which could add further value.

"We are looking to export to a third party liquefier about 280-290km away," Drayton said.

The development will require 17 wells over three phases, with six wells in the first phase, five more in the following decade and six more by 2035.

The wells will be tied to a centrally located floating production system that will connect to an export pipeline.

Worley Parsons completed the FEED for the semi-submersible platform, while Wood Group Kenny completed the work for the subsea gas gathering system and a pipeline to link to an approved or existing liquefaction pipeline, which would need to be routed up the North West Shelf escarpment.

Perth-based Neptune Marine and Greatship Subsea Solutions Australia completed the geophysical and geotechnical surveys for the deepwater development.

The FPS design is still going through "a little bit of refinement", Drayton said, but it will be a semi-submersible facility with 52m columns and accommodations for around 60 workers.

"In terms of timelines for the project, we have had some ups and downs with the project.

"So while the initial drilling work was completed between 2010-12, we did complete a front-end engineering and design study on the FPS and the SURF [subsea, umbilicals, risers and flowlines], but the project was put on hold for some time while we were trying to get traction with our commercial agreements with the third party liquefier, and we actually downsized a fair bit as we struggled to get those agreements in place."

Hess in Australia has been revitalised over the past 18 months, and with some revisions to the FEED underway the oiler is working with its unnamed third party on tie-in locations and flow assurance, and it has started looking at expressions of interest for the FPS with three consortia now on the short list.

Project sanction is likely to be in mid-2017, four years after the original target. It will take about four years to first gas.

Drayton says there will eventually be opportunities for development drilling, the integrated subsea system, and it will soon tender for Christmas trees and control systems, as well as all the other subsea equipment this year.

"While we have gone to market already we have included in our evaluation process a fairly substantial part on industry participation, and we are expecting that our requirements flow through to the consortia when they get their proposals together," he said.

In terms of Hess' sole remaining interests onshore Australia, its leases in the Canning Basin secured from the Clive Palmer-controlled Kingsway Oil haven fallen behind.

"Nothing is happening there, they are a casualty of capex cutbacks," Drayton said.

The blocks contain the tight, non-commercial Sally May oil discovery in the Ordovician Nita Formation, as well as the Looma-1 and Dodonea-1 wells that proved the presence of the dolomitised Nita limestone and the Acacia Sandstone, while oil was recovered from Mirbelia-1 in 1985

Hess paid $12 million for Kingsway's 62,000 square kilometres of acreage, comprising two granted blocks and four large application areas to add to its own recent holdings, giving it a total of 78,407sq.km of the under explored blocks in the Kidston Sub-basin.

The US independent oiler has a $2.4 billion capital budget for 2016, and expects to produce 330,000-350,000boepd this year.