Shell Australia has submitted an environment plan to NOPSEMA for development drilling on the Crux natural gas field, off the coast of Western Australia.
NOPSEMA said that Shell wanted to launch the Crux development drilling programme to support development within production licence AC/L10.
The Shell-operated Crux development is located in Commonwealth waters in the northern Browse Basin, 190km offshore northwest Australia and 620km northeast of Broome, in approximately 165 metres of water depth.
The Crux gas field has been identified as a source of backfill gas to the Prelude Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) facility. Crux is expected to have the capacity to supply Prelude FLNG with up to 550 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (mmscfd).
Development of this project will consist of a platform operated remotely from Prelude with five wells expected to be drilled initially. Moreover, an export pipeline will connect the platform to Prelude, which is around 160km southwest of Crux. Shell anticipates construction to start in 2022 with the first gas expected in 2027.
NOPSEMA also recently started assessment of Shell’s environmental plan for the Crux seabed survey campaign.
The aim of this survey is to investigate sub-seabed geological conditions at the proposed pipeline pipelay initiation and the Pipeline End Manifold (PLEM) locations for the Crux pipeline.
