Woodside Petroleum inked a deal with the Western Australian government to supply gas from its Pluto field to the North West Shelf (NSW) liquefied natural gas (LNG) project through a pipeline, the state government and company said on Friday.
Woodside said it would feed gas from Pluto through the construction of an interconnector pipeline along the Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline corridor to the NWS project's Karratha gas plant.
"Connecting the Pluto and NWS facilities accelerates the production of offshore Pluto gas and provides flexible access to emerging LNG processing capacity," Woodside's outgoing Chief Executive Officer Peter Coleman said.
Woodside will now supply an additional 45.6 petajoules of domestic gas from its existing share of the NWS project from 2025, Australia's top independent gas producer said.
The agreement follows a deal in December between Woodside's Burrup Hub and the NWS Project partners to process about 3 million tonnes of LNG and 24.7 petajoules of domestic gas at the Karratha gas plant.
Western Australia's government said on Friday the new interconnector would create 320 construction jobs, adding that Woodside has agreed to make gas equivalent of 15% of its LNG exports available to the domestic market.
The NWS project, operated by Woodside, counts BHP Group, BP, Chevron and Shell as part owners.
(Reporting by Sameer Manekar in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Nikhil Kurian Nainan; Editing by Amy Caren Daniel)
