Ichthys Venturer, the floating production, storage and offloading facility for the Ichthys LNG project, sailed away from the Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering yard in South Korea en route to Australia.
The sail away follows the completion of commissioning and preparation work, Inpex said on Wednesday.
The 336-metre long ship-shaped, offshore facility began the 5,600-kilometer voyage that will take approximately one month to complete, towards its ultimate destination in the Browse Basinkilometers kilometres off the north coast of Western Australia.
Ichthys LNG project managing director, Louis Bon noted the facility has the capacity of 1.12 million barrels of condensate and will have a continuous operating life of 40 years.
The facility will be permanently moored in 250 meter deep waters, where it will undergo hook-up and commissioning, along with the Ichthys Explorer central processing facility (CPF), located 3.5 kilometers away.
When operational, the FPSO will process and store condensate delivered from the Ichthys LNG Project’s CPF before periodically offloading this condensate to export carrier vessels.
Ichthys LNG’s central processing facility (CPF), the Ichthys Explorer, had been storm-safe moored in the Ichthys field off Western Australia last month.
The CPF is the central hub for initial offshore processing of all the well fluids delivered from a 130-kilometre network of subsea well infrastructure.
Gas from the facility will be sent through an 890-kilometre subsea pipeline to the onshore LNG plant, at Bladin Point, near Darwin for processing.
First LNG from the project is now expected by March 31 next year.
The Ichthys project is expected to produce 8.9 million tons of LNG and 1.6 million tons of LPG each year, along with more than 100,000 barrels of condensate per day at peak.
The project is a joint venture between Inpex, major partner Total, Taiwan’s CPC Corporation and the Australian subsidiaries of Tokyo Gas, Osaka Gas, Kansai Electric, Chubu Electric Power and Toho Gas.