Australia’s $180 bln LNG megaproject boom enters final stretch
* Shell, Inpex race to tap gas in adjacent fields
* Ichthys LNG targets first output by March 2018
* Prelude FLNG seen starting between April and July
* Australia on course to 88 mln T/yr LNG export capacity
By Sonali Paul
MELBOURNE, Aug 14 (Reuters) – The last massive component of Australia’s $180 billion liquefied natural gas construction boom arrived on Monday, stepping up a race between Anglo-Dutch giant Shell and Japan’s Inpex to start chilling gas for export in 2018.
Company reputations are at stake, as well as first access to overlapping gas fields and Australia leapfrogging Qatar as the world’s largest exporter of LNG.
The Ichthys Venturer, a floating production, storage and offloading facility, travelled 5,600 km (3,500 miles) from a South Korean shipyard and will be moored 220 km off Western Australia to handle condensate from the Ichthys field.