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Ichthys Managing Director speaks at LNG 18 – says project is 81% complete

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LNG Industry,


Speaking at the LNG 18 conference in Perth, Australia, the Managing Director of the Ichthys LNG project, Louis Bon, provided an update on the project and the lessons learned from it.

Bon looked at some of the health, safety and environment (HSE) challenges of the project, saying: “At the start of the project we looked at the 280 million work hours required to build the facilities, and the risks we needed to manage. We also analysed the diverse range of contractors we would need to partner with in many countries across the globe.

“This reinforced to me, and our management team, that to meet our HSE goals, our safety leadership needed to transcend all geographical, cultural, and language barriers. This formed the basis of our the concept we drive that HSE is borderless – where we freely share all lessons learned and take action across our project worldwide in high risk control areas.

“The oil and gas industry has spent much effort in the past 10 years in Australia enhancing safety awareness in its workforce. Through the tens of thousands of personnel working on the Ichthys project, we are proud to be playing our part to drive improved HSE performance in Australia and the world.”

Bon went on to list the challenges of constructing a facility that would endure 40 years of extreme weather conditions, and working within the strict environmental laws and regulations regarding the installation of infrastructure in the north. He said: “It’s not that the rules and regulations are tougher than they might be elsewhere. It’s that there is a lot of public interest in how our project proponents are going to manage the environment, and particularly when we are uniquely working on the doorstep of a capital city.

“But this technical complexity and difficulty is exactly what has lured some of the industry’s finest expertise to Australia and our global project offices to work on this giant, complicated project.

“With so many work fronts in different countries and thousands of people working around the clock, we use a proven project management organisation with a tight grip on budget, schedule and seamless interface management.

“This allows us to integrate different schedules and planning constraints across many project sites, deliverables and teams across the world and ensure smooth progression of the project.”

Summarising the progress of the project, Bonn said: “We’ve finished laying the 42 in. subsea gas export pipeline and infield pipelay is also complete, we’ve begun drilling production wells, and we’ve installed subsea manifolds and Christmas trees. The installation of the riser support structure and associated equipment has also been completed.

“During the past year, the Central Processing Facility (CPF) was safely floated out of dry dock in Korea while the Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) facility is also taking impressive shape. Both of these offshore facilities are set to be ready for sail away later this year, making the journey of 5600 nautical miles from Korea to Australia.

“Onshore in Darwin we are more than half way through construction at Bladin Point.

“We are 81% complete and on target for first production in the third quarter of 2017.

“Australia has a target of supplying around 84 million t of LNG in 2018.

“Ichthys will be providing more than 10% of this capacity.

“We look forward to making a substantial contribution towards Australia’s goal of becoming the world’s leading exporter of LNG.

“When completed, the Ichthys LNG project will be a success story, not only for INPEX and its joint venture partners, but also for Australia, Japan and the global LNG industry.

“The Ichthys joint venture participants have the opportunity to add four more production trains fed by Browse Basin and Bonaparte Basin gas, which is now far more accessible because of the Ichthys gas export pipeline.

“So the Ichthys project being built today is really just the beginning of something that will benefit Australia for the rest of the century.”

Edited from press release by David Rowlands

Read the article online at: https://www.lngindustry.com/liquefaction/15042016/ichthys-managing-director-speaks-at-lng-18-says-project-is-81-complete-2291/

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