The expansion of the development represents the next phase in gas supply to the existing North West Shelf Venture's Goodwyn Alpha platform, a key part of what remains Australia's largest LNG project.

GWF-2 will consist of eight production wells developed in four drill centres and tied back to the Alpha platform via a 36km subsea pipeline.

The proposed development seeks to develop six fields in the vicinity of Goodwyn Alpha: Keast, Dockrell, Sculptor, Rankin, Lady Nora and Pemberton within WA-5-L, WA-6-L, WA-24-L and WA-51-R, about 135km north-west of Dampier.

The project sits in less than 130m of water.

The proposed wells will be drilled by a moored mobile offshore drilling unit, although a pile based mooring system may be required for the deeper water Sculptor, Rankin and Lady Nora Pemberton well centres.

Installation is expected to take almost eight months.

Subsea installation and commissioning of subsea hardware including umbilical to tie wells into the GWF-2 pipeline is planned to take around six months.

GWF-2 will tie-in to the existing Greater Western Flank Phase 1 subsea isolation valve manifold and pre- commissioning of the tieback will be undertaken prior to newly installed infrastructure coming online.

The NWSV comprises Woodside as operator, Japan Australia LNG, Chevron Corporation, Shell, BHP Billiton, each with a one-sixth share, plus CNOOC.

The operator has started final approvals from the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority.

The broader Greater Western Flank area consists of 16 fields located to the south-west of the Goodwyn A platform.

Phase one, development of the Goodwyn GH and Tidepole fields, was sanctioned in 2011 and is due to start production in early 2016.

Stage 2 of the GWF follow's the approval for development of the Persephone project in November 2014.

Persephone involves a subsea tie-back from the Persephone field to the North Rankin complex.

Wood Group Kenny has undertaken the front-end engineering design (FEED) of the flowline system for GWF-2.

Last week Woodside appointed Norwegian company Aibel Singapore the front-end engineering design contract for the Greater Enfield project, which aims to develop the Laverda and Cimatti fields on the North West Shelf, using the existing Ngujima-Yin floating production storage and offloading vessel, which is located at the Vincent field.

The Greater Enfield development seeks to access about 70 million barrels of oil equivalent.

The Greater Enfield development concept consists of up to 14 wells tied back to the existing Ngujima-Yin FPSO via a 16-inch rigid production flowline and a 10-inch flexible production riser.