Arabic version: مشروع براوز يواجه تساؤلات بشأن التمويل
According to ABC News, questions are being raised over whether Woodside’s proposed $30 billion Browse gas project off Western Australia’s Kimberley coast can secure the financing needed for construction. The project would pipe gas from the Browse Basin to the North West Shelf processing operation on the Burrup Peninsula and could become Australia’s most expensive resource development.
Elisa Leys, acting Tokyo office director of Solutions for Climate, said rising project costs and shrinking finance options could create a major obstacle. She said the pool of financing was drying up as costs increased. Browse partners include Woodside, BP, Mitsui and Mitsubishi, while the Australian arm of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company bought Shell’s 16.7 per cent stake in the North West Shelf for $2.1 billion.
Australian lenders have tightened policies on new fossil-fuel developments. ANZ said it would not directly finance new or expanded upstream gas projects, including LNG liquefaction plants and certain dedicated pipeline infrastructure. Commonwealth Bank said it would provide no project finance to new or expanded oil and gas extraction developments, while NAB said it would not directly lend to assets dedicated solely to greenfield oil and gas extraction projects.
Saul Kavonic, an oil and gas analyst at MST Financial, said Australian bank lending was not especially important because Browse participants could access global debt markets and government-backed facilities. He said Japanese funding and ADNOC’s arrival strengthened the project’s funding prospects. Woodside said it was still undertaking design work and had made no financing decisions, adding that Browse would require state and federal regulatory approvals.
Ms Leys said Solutions for Climate examined 42 banks that had funded Browse proponents in the past five years and found 13 would be unable to provide project finance, with three also facing difficulty lending to Woodside. She said the gas fields contain about 12 per cent carbon dioxide and that the project carried 1.6 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions not accounted for.
