Golden Beach gas project moves toward FID with government loan

The Australian government has granted a $32 million (Aus.) commercial loan to G B Holdings Ltd., Melbourne, to accelerate development of Golden Beach gas field in the offshore Gippsland basin of eastern Victoria. The loan is intended to speed the project towards a final investment decision.

The field, discovered by Burmah Oil Co. in 1967, lies in shallow Victorian State waters 3 km off the Ninety Mile beach near the hamlet of Golden Beach.

The project will tap a 32 m-thick gas column in a reservoir about 620 m below seabed and involves drilling two production wells tapped as subsea completions connected to a buried subsea pipeline to bring gas to shore and connect with existing infrastructure near ExxonMobil’s gas hub at Longford.

GB Energy will drill the wells, construct the pipeline, and build a compressor station to enable the gas to be injected into the Longford to Melbourne gas trunkline.

Gas production into the Victorian domestic market is expected to last for 2 years, after which the depleted reservoir will be converted into an underground gas storage facility with a capacity of about 12.5 petajoules.

The project was identified in a government fund created in the 2021 budget to accelerate priority projects to alleviate the projected gas supply shortfall on Australia’s east coast.