Western Australia faces post LNG investment slump
Published by Joseph Green,
Editor
LNG Industry,
Bloomberg are reporting that the startup of Chevron Corporation’s mammoth US$54 billion Gorgon gas export plant last year has left Western Australia grappling with a slowdown as a decade-long investment bonanza subsides.
The value of projects in Western Australia, home to the nation’s largest conventional gas reserves, has slumped to its lowest since the financial crisis in 2008. Projects being built in the state were worth AUS$64.7 billion at the end of June 2017, a 46% decline from a year earlier.
The completion of Gorgon has weighed heavily on investment with engineering construction now accounting for less than 10% of the state’s economic value compared with more than 20% during the peak of the mining boom in 2012. Chevron’s Gorgon project off northwest Australia employed more than 10 000 people at its peak.
The investment decline shows the challenge for resource-rich Australia to lock in a new wave of LNG projects amid a muted outlook for LNG. A glut of production capacity from countries including Australia, Qatar and the US has helped drive down spot prices by about 70% since February 2014. No company has sanctioned a major new green-field LNG development since late 2013.
Read the article online at: https://www.lngindustry.com/liquefaction/26072017/western-australia-faces-post-lng-investment-slump/
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