Woodside said the planned Pluto and Browse projects off the Western Australian coast would sell LNG to north Asia but were also likely to find US buyers.
However, meeting US demand could require building or retrofitting a new generation of LNG tankers that could reliquify gas on board, Woodside said.
"Australia is very clearly on the radar of many US LNG buyers," gas marketing director Reinhardt Matisons told analysts and investors.
“Woodside had already received approaches from buyers on the US east coast.”
Matisons said growing US natural gas demand had opened up a new market for the developments, even though it can take a tanker up to 60 days to make a round-trip to LNG import terminals in Massachusetts and Louisiana.
In contrast it takes about a 20-day round-trip to Japan or 40 days to California.
Despite terminating a deal earlier this year with Crystal Energy in the US to develop a Californian LNG import terminal, Woodside chief executive Don Voelte said the company had not abandoned the growing US west coast market.
“Woodside is now looking at different options for getting gas to California,” he said.
Reheating the gas on dedicated tankers and piping it directly to land rather than first routing it through an offshore terminal was a possibility, he said.
“This could help allay concerns about a terminal being a terrorist target or marring the view of wealthy homeowners,” he said.
Woodside says the US was a good market to get into in this current climate, due to a faster growing LNG market than Asia and record gas prices – driven by changes in market fundamentals and hurricanes Rita and Katrina.
For now, negotiations for gas sales from Pluto, in which Woodside holds a 100% interest, are “well-advanced” with north Asian customers contracted for base volumes, the company said.
The Japanese were still key customers and were cleverly buying gas ahead of time through long-term contracts rather than from spot shipments as with the US market, according to Voelte.
Woodside predicts LNG demand from the Asia-Pacific region will more than double by 2015, from about 90 million tonnes per annum to about 190 mtpa. It said the 100-million-tonne difference was still uncontracted.
Its projects were timed to take advantage of these market openings, with opportunities in traditional Korean markets and contract expiries in Japan, the company said.
Woodside said 2006 would be a big year for its 50% held Browse project, with plans for further drilling, reserves certification and marketing.
First production from Pluto is expected in 2011, while Browse should begin selling between 2011 and 2014, the company said.
Worldwide, Woodside predicts gas supply shortfalls, with project delays, seasonal demand, cold winters, Atlantic demand and nuclear problems.
