The scope of the developments is breathtaking.
From The Australian:
THE Gillard government says it will discourage more onshore standalone liquefied natural gas plants, apart from the controversial Browse project planned near Broome and another potential Gladstone plant, with six LNG hubs in northern Australia seen as enough.
At the same time, Exxon Mobil has given a downbeat assessment of its Scarborough LNG joint venture with BHP Billiton - another potential west coast LNG development - flagging high potential development costs.
With last week's approval of the $US34 billion ($32.7bn) Ichthys project at Darwin, Australia now has eight separate LNG plants with an estimated total cost of $175bn - at Darwin, Gladstone, the Burrup Peninsula, Barrow Island and Ashburton North near Onslow.
Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson said those hubs, along with Broome if the Woodside Petroleum-led joint venture decided a plant there was economic, were an "ideal end result".
"For the foreseeable future, that is potentially how we should encourage industry to develop - through those gas hubs, with one up in the air - and that's how we end up on Browse,'' Mr Ferguson told The Australian....MORE
