Origin said the decision of the other joint venture partners - Australian Worldwide Exploration (AWE), CalEnergy Gas (Australia), Wandoo Petroleum - to proceed follows the granting of state and federal environmental approvals and approval from each Joint Venture party to commit the remaining $400 million of project expenditure over the next 18 months.
The BassGas Project involves the development of the Yolla field, located in Bass Strait, 147 kilometres from the southern Victorian coast. Origin said the field will supply enough gas to service up to 67 terajoules of gas sales a day, together with substantial volumes of condensate and LPG.
It is expected that once the project comes on stream in the second half of 2004, it will supply around 10 % of the Victorian natural gas market over the next 15 years.
Origin Energy Retail Limited (OERL) has agreed to purchase 100% of the 20 petajoules of gas produced annually for its retail business through individual contracts with each Joint Venture Party. Condensate will be despatched by road tanker to Shell's refinery at Geelong and LPG will be sold to Elgas and OERL.
Origin said the project timeline is as follows: construction of the 75 million cubic feet per day onshore gas plant near Lang Lang to begin first quarter 2003; the 32km, onshore pipelines to start third quarter 2003; the 147km, sub-sea pipelines in first quarter 2004, offshore production platform installation to start first quarter 2004 while sales gas production comes online in third quarter of 2004.
The participants in the T/RL1 Joint Venture are Origin Energy -operator 37.5%, AWE 30%
CalEnergy 20% and Wandoo Petroleum 12.5%.
