Liquid Niugini LNG is a natural gas liquefaction project in

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

. It is developed by Liquid Niugini Gas Ltd, and owned by PNG LNG Inc., a Bahamas-based parent holding company. It is one of several natural gas projects in Papua New Guinea and is associated with the Hides gas field

Technical description

The LNG plant will be built adjacent to the

oil refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial processes, industrial process Factory, plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refining, refined into products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, Bitumen, asphalt base, ...

owned by InterOil near

Port Moresby (; Tok Pisin: ''Pot Mosbi''), also referred to as Pom City or simply Moresby, is the capital and largest city of Papua New Guinea. It is one of the largest cities in the southwestern Pacific (along with Jayapura) outside of Australia and New ...

. The LNG plant will consist of one processing train with nominal capacity of 5 million tonnes with option to add a second train to increase total capacity up to 9 million tonnes of LNG and 1 million tonnes of natural gas liquids per year. It will be supplied with natural gas from Elk and Antelope gas and condensate fields by natural gas pipeline. The preliminary engineering and evaluation design work were done in spring 2007. The plant will use ConocoPhillips' proprietary natural gas liquefaction technology (Optimized CascadeSM Process) and it is to be constructed by

Bechtel Bechtel Corporation () is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company founded in San Francisco, California in 1898, and headquartered in Reston, Virginia in the Washington metropolitan area. , the '' E ...

. The project is expected to cost US$5 billion to US$7 billion. The first cargo of LNG is planned to be delivered in 2012. In December, 2009, Ex-Im Bank Directors approved US$3 billion in financing for the

ExxonMobil Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational List of oil exploration and production companies, oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the Successors of Standard Oil, largest direct s ...

-led project in December, 2009.

Project company

PNG LNG Inc is owned equally by InterOil Corp., Merrill Lynch Commodities, Inc., and Pacific LNG Operations Ltd. There are provisions for the entry of strategic partners, and for inclusion of the Government of Papua New Guinea.

Criticism

The project has reportedly sparked violence and in April, 2012, the

government called in troops to quell opposition from villagers after a landslide linked to a quarry that had been used by the project killed an estimated 25 people.Further Updates on Tumbi Landslide from RNZI, LNG Watch, Papua New Guinea, available at http://lngwatchpng.blogspot.com/2012/03/further-updates-on-tumbi-landslide-from.html

References

{{Reflist Oil and gas companies of Papua New Guinea Proposed liquefied natural gas plants