Countdown to Offshore Europe
Final preparations are underway in the London trade and investment office ahead of the Offshore Europe Oil and Gas conference.
The Western Australian Government will have a stand at the conference in Aberdeen which is set to attract more than 1,500 companies and thousands more visitors over the course of three days.
Offshore Europe organisers estimate the 25,000 square metre exhibition is nearly 10% larger than it was in 2009 and will feature some of the world’s leading majors such as Shell, BP, Petrobras, ExxonMobil and Chevron. Other international operating companies participating include Statoil, Saudi Aramco, GDF Suez, Centrica, BG Group, DONG, Maersk, Cepsa, ENI, Petronas Carigali, Premier Oil, TAQA, Total, Addax Petroleum and INPEX.
Western Australia’s stand will be staffed by experts from the London office specialising in skilled migration and business investment. The Agent General Kerry Sanderson AO will also attend. Jonathan Smith from the Australian Marine Complex will also be at the stand during the three day event.
Trade and Investment Manager Stuart Russell has encouraged anyone interested in getting involved in Western Australia’s world class Oil and Gas sector to come along and meet staff at the conference.
“We will be in stand 2C 150 and hope to meet as many people as we can during this excellent event. Western Australia’s economy continues to perform strongly and its Oil and Gas sector is on the verge of a massive period of expansion,” he said.
While staff from the trade office speak to potential investors at the stand, a delegation of more than a dozen executives from Western Australian companies will also attend the event. The conference will allow the delegation to attend seminars about industry developments and meet representatives from some of the world’s leading oil and gas companies.
Western Australia is now a world leader in the oil and gas field with more than $65b in projects committed and a further $118b in the pipe line.
The state boasts the Gorgon gas project, the world’s largest resource project which is underway on Barrow Island, off the coast of Karratha. It’s expected the project will eventually produce 15 million tonnes of LNG per year. That’s enough to fill Wembley Stadium 17,000 times. There are also plans to build a A$30billion gas processing facility in the Browse Basin in the far north of Western Australia as well as another project valued at A$23billion near Onslow in the Pilbara.
Western Australia will also be the site for Shell’s world first floating LNG platform. The facility will be 488 metres long, and will be the largest floating offshore facility in the world, longer than four football (soccer) fields laid end to end. When fully equipped and with its storage tanks full, it will weigh around 600,000 tonnes – roughly six times as much as the largest aircraft carrier. Some 260,000 tonnes of that weight will consist of steel – around five times more than was used to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It will be moored 200 kilometres off the WA coast.
Western Australia currently exports 9 per cent of the world’s LNG. This will grow significantly with the introduction of projects such as Pluto and Gorgon. It’s anticipated that by 2020 Western Australia will produce about 20 per cent of the world’s LNG production.
For more information about Western Australia's presence at Offshore Europe click here.
To visit the Offshore Europe site click here.
IMAGE: A member of the Government of Western Australia's staff talks to a stakeholder at Offshore Europe in 2009.
