Adelaide-based Santos Ltd. plans this year to drill and connect more than 130 new production wells in the Fairview coal-seam gas field in Bowen basin, north of Roma in central eastern Queensland. Work is scheduled to begin this month with first gas from the operation coming online in October 2022, the company said. Santos will spend A$360 million on the drilling program.
At peak production the Fairview project is expected to produce about 78 terajoules/day of gas. The gas will be used to feed the Santos-operated 8.6-million tonne/year Gladstone LNG plant on Curtis Island via an existing 420-km buried gas pipeline.
Santos managing director and chief executive officer Kevin Gallagher said that while the gas from Fairview will feed the Gladstone plant and bring in export revenue, the investment will help free up other gas supply sources for the Australian domestic gas market. Fairview’s expected production would meet roughly 25% of Queensland’s demand.
So far, 600 wells have been drilled at Fairview out of a total of 1,122 approved.
Fairview field, about 30 km northeast of the town of Injune, was discovered in 1994. Santos bought into the field in 2005 with the US$466-million acquisition of US-listed Tipperary Corp. to gain a 75% interest and operatorship.
Gladstone LNG’s concept was revealed in 2007 and first LNG was shipped to Asia from the plant in 2015.
