Eni starts Blacktip gas field off Australia

Rick Wilkinson
OGJ Correspondent

MELBOURNE, Sept. 15 -- Eni Australia’s wholly owned Blacktip natural gas field in the Bonaparte Gulf has been brought on stream via two wells on a wellhead platform, with production moving to a gas processing plant at Wadeye on the Northern Territory coast and a 275-km pipeline to the Alice Springs-Darwin trunkline farther east.

The field lies in 50 m of water about 100 km from the coast. It was discovered by a 50:50 joint venture of Woodside Petroleum and Eni in 2001. Eni bought Woodside’s share in 2005.

Reserves are estimated at 1.2 tcf of wet gas. Condensate will be recovered at Wadeye and piped 4 km back off the coast to a single point mooring system for direct loading onto tankers.

The $270 million (Aus.) development will deliver 30 PJ/year of gas to the Northern Territory’s Power & Water Corp. over the next 25 years.