Woodside shelves $ 55b Aussie gas plant
Bathurst coal miner’s shares dive after court appeal Snakk Media appoints group chief executive
Woodside Petroleum’s chief executive says he is confident that a major gas field off the northwest Australian coast will be exploited despite the energy company yesterday shelving plans for a A$ 45 billion ($ 55 billion) plant to process the gas for export.
Woodside said that it scratched plans to build a processing plant at James Price Pt in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia because ‘‘ the proposed concept doesn’t provide the economic return required to proceed’’.
Woodside will now begin talks with its joint venture partners, which include Shell Australia, about alternatives for the Browse gas field.
Options include building a floating liquefied natural gas plant or piping the gas to existing LNG facilities to the southwest.
Woodside chief executive Peter Coleman said the decision to dump the plan was the result of rising costs. Australia’s mining and natural gas boom has increased wages and pushed up the Australian dollar.
‘‘ We do believe that Browse will get developed,’’ he said.
Woodside had been looking at alternatives to a processing plant at James Price Pt, but said they were not nearly as far developed as the original plan for the facility there.
‘‘ We’ve already come out and said things like floating technology, for example, is a technology that Woodside supports,’’ Coleman said.
‘‘ Whether that’s appropriate for a Browse development will need to be determined by the joint venture over Shares of would- be coking coal miner Bathurst Resources plunged 18.75 per cent to 26c after the first appeal from environmental groups opposing an Environment Court decision upholding its Escarpment open- cut mine resource consents.
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Woodside chief Peter Coleman says the decision to dump the plan was the result of rising costs. time.’’ Coleman said it could be another four or five years before an alternative for the Browse gas field was ready for final approval.
The James Price Pt plant, which would have been among the world’s biggest, had been on the drawing board since 2009.
Shell’s Australian boss Ann Pickard reiterated that it believed its Royal New Zealand Forest & Bird Society and West Coast Environmental Network came less than a day after the company said it hoped to be mining by Christmas.
The long- delayed mine, planned for the ecologically fragile Denniston Plateau above Westport, won backing floating technology would be the fastest, most economic and best technical solution for processing gas from the Browse field.
‘‘ Floating LNG can bring significant long- term, sustainable jobs to Western Australia, Australia, and the Kimberley, as well as providing employment and business opportunities for Kimberley indigenous people,’’ from the Environment Court on March 28, against appeals on the resource consents initially granted in August 2011.
The Forest & Bird appeal lodged in the High Court yesterday relates to a technical aspect of the consents, relating to a mined- out area previously Pickard said. Woodside received conditional planning approval from the Western Australia state government last week to build an A$ 120 million camp to house more than 850 workers at the gas plant.
News that the massive plant would not go ahead was welcomed by environmental groups concerned by potential damage to wilderness and worked by state- owned coal miner Solid Energy.
Bathurst chief executive Hamish Bohannan said the appeal should not be seen as triggering the four- to sixmonth delay he warned appeals would likely create in a teleconference to analysts on Thursday. Floating LNG can bring significant long- term, sustainable jobs to Western Australia, Australia, and the Kimberley, as well as providing employment and business opportunities for Kimberley indigenous people. Aboriginal heritage sites.
‘‘ Woodside and its joint venture partners have avoided possibly the biggest environmental battle in Australia’s history by walking away,’’ Wilderness Society said.
‘‘ The social cost and reputational cost to their company of building this development outside Broome was going to far outweigh any long- term economy benefit,’’ Wilderness Society national director Lyndon Schneider told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.
Coleman said that environmental and administrative compliance requirements for the project had increased and cost increases for Browse had been consistent with other resource extraction projects in Australia.
‘‘ It shouldn’t have any impact on the timing,’’ said Bohannan, who conceded that could depend on achieving a timely hearing.
The Bathurst development has been dogged by delays, to the frustration of Australian shareholders. by Christopher Adams christopher. adams@ nzherald. co. nz Snakk Media, the digital advertising firm founded by tech entrepreneur Derek Handley, has appointed a group chief executive.
The company, which floated on the NZAX last month and has technology that helps companies get their advertising in front of smartphone and tablet users, said Mark Ryan had been made group chief executive.
Ryan, who will be based in Sydney, has been executive director of Snakk Media in Australia for the past 12 months.
‘‘ Mark has more than 16 years business management experience with a strong record of achievement throughout leadership, accelerated growth and restructuring roles in a mix of international, Asia- Pacific and Australian businesses,’’ the company said.
‘‘ These organisations have included private and public technology, digital services, advertising agencies and new media companies.’’
Before joining Snakk, Ryan was Ogilvy Australia’s chief operating officer.
Last month, Snakk Media said its revenue had doubled in the last three months of 2012 compared with the previous year.
Unaudited revenue was $ 1.439 million for October to December — up from $ 686,000 in the last quarter of 2011, the company said.
Shares in Snakk Media, which listed at 6.5c, closed at 15c yesterday.