APLNG and Armour Energy have joined forces to explore gas in Queensland, which will only be sold to Australian manufacturing businesses.
Queensland Mines Minister, Dr Anthony Lynham, announced the joint venture’s successful bid for 18km² of land 22km south-west of Chinchilla.
“This is about more petajoules of Queensland gas in pipes, fuelling jobs in manufacturing.
“While other states close their doors, Queensland continues to rise to the challenge to keep our manufacturers in business.”
The 18 square kilometre block is highly prospective, as exploration levels in the area are high and it is surrounded by production leases.
The first production of gas is expected mid-2020.
Australia Pacific LNG CEO, Warwick King, welcomed the announcement.
“The proximity of the block to our existing infrastructure will allow us to bring the gas to the east coast market efficiently and on competitive terms,” Mr King said.
Armour Energy CEO, Roger Cressey, said “This is a great opportunity for Armour.”
“As an Australian company headquartered in Brisbane, Armour is pleased that the award of this block to the Joint Venture will contribute to the provision of more affordable energy and feedstock to Australian manufacturing businesses.”
Armour is already producing up to 3.6PJ of gas per annum, and exploring for gas for across its 2090km² of exploration acreage on the gas-rich Roma Shelf near its Kincora project.
It was one of four companies awarded exploration tenders to look for domestic-market-only gas in September last year.
Since 2015 , the Queensland Government has released more than 39,000 km2 of land for gas exploration, well over a fifth of it guaranteeing the gas will be for Australian buyers.
This announcement follows the recent news that Senex Energy would seek gas for Australian-supply only on 153km² of land near Miles. Senex has already announced sales contracts with domestic manufacturers for gas from Project Atlas near Wandoan, the first project to develop from the Palaszczuk Government’s domestic-only gas policy initiative.
Queensland has also called for bids to explore a further 3700 square kilometres of land mainly near Springsure in central Queensland. More than a fifth of this land to be used only for domestic gas supply.
Queensland already supplies around 25 per cent of the domestic east coast gas demand.
