The Australian energy group Santos has announced the arrival of the BW Opal floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel at the Barossa gas field, located off Darwin in northern Australia. The FPSO, which has a gas handling capacity of 850 mcf/d (8.8 bcm/year) and a design capacity of 11 kb/d of condensate, has been hooked up at the site. First gas from the project is now expected in the third quarter of 2025.
The Barossa gas project is an offshore gas and condensate project that seeks to supply gas to the 3.7 Mt/year Darwin LNG plant (DLNG) facility in the Northern Territory. Santos and its joint venture partners, SK E&S and JERA have invested US$3.95bn billion on the Barossa LNG project to date, which is now in the final stages of commissioning, as the 262 km Gas Export Pipeline and 123 km Darwin Pipeline Duplication are complete, in addition to subsea infrastructure required for first gas.