just out of interest for us all.
extract only from AFR 12 march 2017
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Margaret Hall has her hands on what is a scarce and highly prized resource: some rapidly available gas in today's tight east coast market.
The chief executive of Seven Group Holdings' energy business says the company's mothballed Longtom field in the Bass Strait is ready to flow gas again, as soon as new commercial deals can be struck for pipeline and processing capacity.
"There's potential to bring some gas into the market as soon as people want to make that happen," Ms Hall said.
"Buyers are knocking on the door on a weekly basis asking when they can get hold of gas."
Longtom has been suspended since mid-2015 due to an electrical fault but a modest $3 million investment in January, including laying a new "umbilical" – underwater cabling for production control and power systems – has resolved the issue.
Now SGH Energy needs to agree on terms with the owners of the pipeline and gas processing plant to which Longtom is already connected, to get its gas to energy-short users.
While that transaction has yet to complete, Ms Hall is hopeful APA will be keen to process gas from other fields in the Orbost plant in advance of the 2019 target for gas from Cooper's new Sole project.
"We're hopeful they'll be looking to try and bring in third-party gas and we hope to be part of that," she said. "It's a really good opportunity for collaboration."
Should all go well, gas could be flowing from Longtom by the year-end, said Ms Hall, the former chief petroleum engineer at Nexus Energy, which Seven controversially bought in 2014 in a $180 million deal after it fell into administration.
While Longtom's 20 petajoules of gas would only make a small dent in the east coast's estimated gas shortfall, Ms Hall, who has been chief executive since September 2015, said it would make a difference for some mid-scale manufacturers.
"It's a quantity that would give one or two industrial users the supply that they are looking for," she said.
The metallurgical engineering graduate from RMIT University knows the Gippsland Basin well, having spent the first 19 years of her career at ExxonMobil, initially in technical and then later commercial roles in the Esso-BHP Billiton venture in the Bass Strait.
Her departure from Esso in 2011, after having worked part time for some years to raise three sons, was driven by a desire to "see what happens outside the ExxonMobil world".
The "difficult" experience through the administration of Nexus provided "a valuable lesson" on corporate governance processes, she said.
Seven Group's 21 per cent stake of Beach Energy and its appetite to expand in east coast gas have raised speculation that it may be examining Origin Energy's "NewCo" conventional oil and gas business for potential acquisition. But quizzed on those broader energy ambitions, Ms Hall pointed out that SGH Energy is managed separately from the Beach interest.
"Obviously we take a close interest in watching what Beach is doing; there's a commonality in that Beach has assets in the same sort of region," she said.
"We are keeping an eye on changes and developments and opportunities that are coming up."
Over in Western Australia, SGH Energy is working with partners Shell and Osaka Gas to decide on the preferred option for the development of the Crux condensates field this year. SGH remains keen to commercialise the offshore field "earlier rather than later", although Shell has historically seen Crux as an add-on to its $US12 billion-plus Prelude floating LNG venture, which would see it developed potentially only late next decade.
cheers
COE Price at posting:
49.5¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
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