BOC Gases operations manager for Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory Paul Dutton told the SEAAOC conference in Darwin on Friday that the company was close to finalising an agreement with ConocoPhillips for feedstock for a helium plant.
“BOC will take vent stream from Darwin LNG, which is about 3 percent helium, 95 percent nitrogen and 2 percent methane, and process it to produce pure helium,” Dutton said.
The plant was first announced in 2005, but progress on the project has been slower than expected.
Helium has a wide range of uses. In liquid form it is used for cooling superconductors, as a gas it can be used for leak detection, metal arc welding and leak detection.
It can also be used in the manufacture of fibre-optic cables.
Dutton said BOC’s Darwin plant would produce about 4.2 million tones of liquid helium a year.
About a third of this would be sold in Australia and New Zealand; the remainder would be exported to Asia.
The facility would be the first helium plant in the Asia-Pacific region.
NT assistant director for gas industries Brian Cann told SEAAOC delegates that the Territory was keen to see more gas-based industries established in Darwin.
Downstream gas industries delivered more employment and investment benefits per unit of energy that LNG did, according to Cann.
“They give greater direct benefits and greater flow-on benefits,” he said. “Downstream gas projects can also encourage investment in derivative industries.”
But a decade of courting industry proponents had produced nothing more than the BOC commitment.
Cann said it was difficult for the Territory to compete with foreign jurisdictions that offered fiscal incentives and cheap, guaranteed gas supplies.
“Australia has a one-size fits all approach to attracting investment and a hands-off free market approach,” he said. “The NT Government wants to see a more strategic approach.”
Speaking at the conference on the previous day, Chief Minister Clare Martin said her government was working with industry to develop business cases for downstream industries.
“We have been in discussions with Dow Chemicals and are heartened by the progress of negotiations and are optimistic about Dow’s future in the Northern Territory,” she said.
On Friday morning, local paper, the Northern Territory News published an “exclusive” saying that Dow was planning to build a multi-billion dollar plant in Darwin.
But Dow Asia Pacific president Jim McIlvenny told reporters on the sidelines of the conference that it was far too premature to commit to any such plant.
The company would need firm gas supplies before it could consider establishing a Darwin operation, he said.
Cann acknowledged this was a problem and said the NT’s known fields were in the Timor Sea, fairly far offshore, and it would take several new projects being started almost simultaneously to make it viable to pipe gas to shore for industrial developments.
