Australian update: pipeline granted ‘major project’ status

The Northern Territory has moved ahead with plans to build a 1000 km pipeline, expected to cost more than AU$ 1 billion, to supply natural gas to eastern Australia.

Chief Minister Adam Giles, an advocate of the plan, used the occasion of the Australia-Japan Joint Business Conference in Darwin to announce the pipeline had been granted "major project" priority status.

He said the pipeline, which did not yet have a private backer, needed to be operational by 2018 to avert a crisis in gas supply on the East coast of Australia.

Potential investors will be able to lodge formal expressions of interest in building and operating the pipeline next month.

The Northern Territory government has called for formal expressions of interest to build a gas pipeline from Alice Springs to Moomba, which could ease NSW’s looming gas shortage and revolutionise the domestic gas market.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles has declared that he wants the expressions of interest process finished by the end of the year, so that construction could start as early as 2016.

Mr Giles is keen to push environmental assessments through in 12 to 18 months to allow construction to begin quickly.

The pipeline has a window of opportunity later this decade as NSW faces a gas shortage due to the start of the LNG export market in Queensland and community opposition in NSW to coal-seam gas extraction.

Edited from various sources by Elizabeth Corner

Sources: ABC, The Australian

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/business-news/13102014/australian-update-pipeline-granted-major-project-status/