BG to invest $15 bn in Australian LNG project

BG Group, the UK’s third-largest oil and gas producer, said it will invest $15 billion in the Curtis liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Australia over the next four years, its single biggest investment.

The project in Queensland state, which is scheduled to start fuel shipments in 2014, is among more than a dozen proposed LNG developments in Australia, worth about A$200 billion ($197 billion), seeking to tap Asian demand for cleaner-burning fuel to curb emissions. BG and rival Santos Ltd won Australian government approval for their Queensland LNG projects on October 22 and must comply with about 1,500 state and federal conditions.

“We wouldn’t be here today unless we thought we could deliver the project based on those conditions,” Catherine Tanna, managing director of the company’s Australian unit QGC Pty Ltd said in a telephone interview today.

The Queensland Curtis LNG Project involves building an LNG plant on Curtis Island, some 450 kilometres north of Brisbane, a 540-kilometre underground pipeline network, and expanding production in gas fields in the state’s Surat Basin, Tanna said on a conference call today.

BG has reached agreements to sell LNG to customers in China, Japan, Singapore and Chile and will also provide gas to markets in eastern Australia, the Berkshire, UK-based company said in a statement today.