Perth, Western Australia Regional Headquarters for Companies Servicing The Australian and South East Asian Petroleum Industry

Abstract

Abstract Western Australia is an ideal location for regional headquartering and over the last few years many international companies have taken the opportunity to establish offices in Western Australia to service their operations in South East Asia and Australia. This paper is one of three papers which review the opportunit.ies and growth in the oil and gas industry In Western Australia. Theother papers are "Petroleum Developments in Western Australia by Ian Fraser and Richard Bruce of the Western Australia Department of Minerals and Energy, and "Western Australia, a Highly Competitive Destination for Private Sector Investment In the Offshore Petroleum Industry" by James Pearson of the Western Australian Department of Resources Development. These papers should be referred to for details of existing and prospective oil and gas projects. Introduction. Western Australia has experienced strong growth rates over the last decade with Gross State Product averaging close to 5% per annum. It has also become a destination for high quality investment as it has good infrastructure and an educated and skilled workforce to back up its manufactured goods and traded services industries as well as the resource industries. Because of its proximity to South East Asia, it is increasingly being recognized as the ideal location for international companies to establish regional headquarters to service their Australian and Asian mining and petroleum based activities. The backbone for the growth of the Western Australian economy has been the development of its resource sector which has built a strong export base with countries such as Japan, South Korea, and China. The value of Western Australia's mineral exports in 1996/97 was US$10.5 billion of which petroleum exports, including oil, condensate and LNG, amounted to US$2.4 billion. Western Australia has become a Widely diversified and international economy closely linked through trade to the growing economies of Asia. Western Australia is a highly prospective area for oil and gas, particularly the waters off the north west of the State stretching from the north of Western Australia to the Northern Territory and the Timor Sea which lies between Indonesia and Australia. One in three wells drilled in waters off the north west coast of Western Australia has been a commercial discovery. In December 1996, a significant oil discovery was made in waters some 400 kilometres north of Derby in the north of the State where initial estimates indicated in situ reserves of between 0.5 and 2.6 billion barrels. In the Timor Sea north of the Northern Territory, 15 discoveries have been made in the last 4 years and a further 120 exploration wells are to be drilled in the next 5 years. This area already has two floating production facilities and three additional facilities are being implemented in the next 4 years It is anticipated that with new discoveries, current Western Australian production of oil and condensate of around 280,000 barrels per day will be maintained over the next decade, while LNG annual exports are expected to double to 15 million tonnes by 2004 from the expansion of the North West Shelf Gas Project, and with the establishment of the Gorgon LNG Project could approach 25 million tonnes by 2010.