Developers of Australia’s Beetaloo basin sent the first gas from the project north to Darwin on Tuesday in what they hope will demonstrate steady flows that can underpin wider commercialization of the country’s first shale gas venture. Tamboran Resources and its partner, a subsidiary of Texas-based Formentera Partners, sent gas to the Northern Territory capital from the Shenandoah project more than 600 kilometres (373 miles) away in the desert and an hour’s drive from the outback town of Daly Waters. Early gas is expected to flow at a modest 40 terajoules (37 million cubic feet) per day, fuelling electricity for the grid and giving Beetaloo developers an idea of decline rates, or how quickly gas from a well depletes. With that information they hope to model a development plan that could eventually fuel higher liquefied natural gas export capacity from the world’s No. 2 LNG producer, or power vast data centres, emulating the U.S. shale industry. “It means we have the security of supply,” Northern Territory Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said before turning on the gas from a wellhead with Madeleine King, the Australian federal government’s resources minister. “It means we can really start to focus on making sure our generation poles and wires business is running as efficiently as possible so that costs don’t have to continue to go up.” The project faces plenty of hurdles including the need for billions of dollars in pipeline capacity as well as political challenges including Australia’s new policies requiring data centres to be primarily powered by renewable energy and LNG projects to reserve 20 per cent of their gas for the local market. Tamboran CEO Todd Abbott, a veteran of the U.S. shale industry, said the company would focus first on sending gas to Darwin, then it had “some technical things that we’ll work through, and regulatory things,” before further expansion. Smaller firms backed by U.S. players have been drilling in the area since a moratorium was lifted eight years ago. Japanese giant Inpex recently took a position in Formentera’s large acreage nearby, in what analysts see as a boost from a deep-pocketed player that could provide access to the capital needed for wide-scale development. “The opportunity now is to build on this momentum and attract the investment needed to unlock the full economic and energy security potential of the Beetaloo,” Samantha McCulloch, CEO of lobby group Australian Energy Producers who also attended the event, said in a statement. Reporting by Helen Clark; Editing by Kate Mayberry
