Woodside proposes tanker-based LNG terminal offshore California
Knoxville, Tenn. (Platts)--18Jan2006
Woodside Natural Gas Wednesday said it will seek permission to build a
liquefied natural gas facility offshore southern California that would
regasify LNG onboard tankers and transport it some 15 miles to shore via an
underwater pipeline.
The project, called OceanWay, "would use safe, state-of-the-art
technology at least 15 miles off the coast of California and standard pipeline
and storage facilities on land," the company, a subsidiary of Australia's
Woodside, said.
The company said it is currently considering several sites for the
project from "south of Monterey Bay to north of Camp Pendleton," saying it
prefers a remote location away from populated areas, with minimum onshore
disruption and safe oceanographic conditions.
Woodside's tankers would offload their regasified LNG into a flexible
pipeline attached to an underwater buoy, with gas then flowing into the
15-mile pipeline along the ocean floor and then into storage and to a
connection with the Southern California Gas system onshore.
In a conference call with media Wednesday, Woodside officials touted the
company's ready and available supply of natural gas along Australia's North
West Shelf, as well as existing liquefaction facilities, which are currently
used to ship LNG chiefly to Japan.
While the company would not put a price tag on the facilities, officials
said the cost of building new tankers with onboard regasifiction technology
and building the pipeline would likely approach the cost of a typical onshore
project. The company also declined to describe the projected capacity of the
proposed terminal.
A similar project by BHP Billiton, the Cabrillo project, involves an LNG
regasification platform some 14 miles offshore Oxnard, California, and is
farther along in the state and federal permitting project.
---Stephanie Seay, stephanie_seay@platts.com
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