The Australian-owned oil and gas company Santos and its Gladstone LNG (GLNG) partners plan to invest AUD900m (US$750m) to support upstream activities in the Maranoa, Western Downs, Central Highlands and Banana gas fields in Queensland (Australia) throughout 2018. This investment includes the first year of funding for the new AUD750m (US$585m) Roma East project, which will be developed over the next three years, and upstream developments around the Fairview, Scotia and Arcadia fields. The Roma East project is expected to add nearly 50 PJ/year (14 TWh/year) of gas to Queensland's production in 2020 (about 8% of the expected east coast domestic gas demand in 2018).
The company will also build around 420 km of pipelines and 670 km of power lines to support the new infrastructure. Once this expansion programme is complete by the end of the year, Queensland is expected to produce around 70% of the total Australian east coast natural gas supply.
GLNG (Santos 30%, Petronas 27.5%, Total 27.5% and KOGAS 15%) operates the fifth Australian LNG plant (7.8 Mt/year divided into two trains commissioned respectively in 2015 and 2016).