Argus reported that the Australian government has given environmental approval for the Chevron operated 8.9 million tonnes per annum Wheatstone LNG venture in the Carnarvon basin offshore Western Australia. This is the final government approval needed before Chevron makes a final investment decision on the USD 31 billion project, which is scheduled to start production in 2016.

Canberra's decision comes after the Western Australian state government last month gave environmental approval for the two-train Wheatstone project, which will be the second significant LNG project operated by Chevron in Australia with the three train, 15 million tonnes per annum Gorgon LNG venture.

Chevron has signed two deals to sell LNG from Wheatstone to Japanese utilities in the past two months. It last week signed a binding deal to deliver 800,000 tonnes per annum of LNG from Wheatstone to Kyushu Electric Power, following on from a 3.1 million tonnes per annum sales deal agreed in late July with Tokyo Electric Power.

South Korea's state owned gas firm Kogas signed a heads of agreement in July 2010 to buy 1.5 million tonnes per annum of LNG from Wheatstone. It will also buy a 5% stake in the project, giving it a total of 1.95 million tonnes per annum. But the agreement with Kogas is yet to become fully binding.

Chevron has a 71.77% stake in Wheatstone LNG, with US independent Apache owning 13%, state owned Kuwaiti oil firm KPC's overseas upstream arm KUFPEC owning 7% and Shell with 6.4%. Kyushu took a 1.83% stake in the venture when it signed its sales deal last week.

Mr George Kirkland VP of Chevron said that the Australian government's decision is an important milestone towards reaching FID on Wheatstone in 2011.

(Sourced from www.argusmedia.com)