Tamboran is focused on bringing its low carbon dioxide natural gas asset in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin to production through multiple commercialisation pathways.

Tamboran’s Beetaloo strategy will be a phased development, with the aim of establishing first gas flows out of the basin and into local pipelines by the end of 2025. With a regulatory environment that requires operators to offset carbon, the Beetaloo has strong potential compared to other gas deposits in Australia due to its low carbon dioxide content.

Late last year, Tamboran completed the acquisition of Origin Energy’s Beetaloo Basin gas assets, making it the largest acreage holder and operator in the region. Shale gas from the Beetaloo has at least five times less carbon dioxide (about 4 per cent) than the average of around 15 to 20 per cent in large, undeveloped, conventional fields offshore northern Australia.

During the September quarter, Tamboran completed its first drilling campaign in the Beetaloo, drilling four wells and completing a 25-stage stimulation program at the Amungee 2H well. The drilling enabled the Company to upgrade its total 2C gas resources by 32 per cent to two trillion cubic feet.

Tamboran also signed six separate letters of intent with Australia’s largest gas retailers for between 600 and 875 terajoules a day for up to 10 to 15 years, an indicator of the continued long-term domestic demand for Beetaloo gas.

Tamboran Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Joel Riddle told Petroleum Australia the Company believed supplying the NT gas market would be critical in establishing and building its social licence. He said that on the back of the initial pilot development, Tamboran would look to bring a much bigger volume of gas from the Beetaloo to the east coast gas market, which is projected to
have significant shortfalls from 2025 to 2030.

This expansion will see gas volumes on the order of 500 million cubic feet up to a billion cubic feet, which will go towards offsetting those projected shortfalls. Riddle said: “There’s a real opportunity to take this gas supply and displace coal-fired electricity from the east coast, resulting in significant carbon emission reductions.

“Once we have well-supplied markets in the NT and east coast, we will look to stand up an additional leg to our business plan that will be focused on commercialising our gas supplies via LNG into Asia.”

This export plan will be undertaken through Tamboran’s proposed NTLNG development at the Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct in Darwin Harbour, where the Company has secured exclusivity over 440 acres for a 6.6-million-tonne a year LNG facility.

Discussions are currently advancing with the NT government on finalising the lease terms for a long-term agreement for the Middle Arm site. Riddle said the Company was excited to be progressing its fully integrated LNG project, which has the upstream, pipeline and the LNG plant all centred in the NT.

To support its business plan, Tamboran entered a strategic partnership with APA Group in June to support gas transportation routes out of the Beetaloo Basin. The agreement, which is still being negotiated, covers installation of a pipeline to the proposed pilot development as well as potential future pipelines to Australia’s east coast and the proposed Middle Arm development.

The Company’s LNG ambitions have also been bolstered by memorandums of understanding signed with bp and Shell for 2.2 million tonnes of LNG offtake each. Tamboran recently began concept select engineering studies at Middle Arm, which will be finished in the first quarter of next year and lead into both pre-FEED and FEED over the next 12 to 24 months.

Its operations are being designed with new technologies to support the Company’s ambition to be a net zero Scope 1 and 2 emission gas producer from the commencement of commercial
production. This includes opportunities including fully electrified drilling rigs and methane detection on all equipment including pipelines. Riddle noted the Company was also considering electrifying
LNG trains at its proposed Middle Arm facilities, and saw an opportunity to connect its electrified equipment in the Beetaloo with renewable energy.

He said: “In the concept select process, we’ll select technology optimising and sizing of our train, and we’ll look to make some design decisions around electric drive versus gas turbines.
“We see there being significant opportunities for electrification, and there are also a few renewable projects planned in the NT that would allow us to potentially use that renewable power with an electric drive technology on the LNG train.”