Australia's Beach Energy said on Monday that its onshore Waitsia project north of Perth had begun sending gas to a liquefied natural gas export facility operated by Woodside Energy.
Japan's Mitsui operates the Waitsia project and shares it equally with Beach.
In 2020, Mitsui and Beach signed a deal with the North West Shelf LNG facility partners, which are Woodside, BP, Shell and Japan LNG to supply the facility. Japan LNG is a partnership of Mitsui and Mitsubishi and holds one-sixth of the facility.
The Australian Government signed a life extension for the LNG export facility to 2070 several months ago, but the gas fields that fed it for decades are declining, despite some upcoming infill drilling planned by Woodside.
Waitsia is being used as a backstop until Woodside approves the large offshore Browse gas project, to be developed as backfill.
Waitsia is one of only two domestic gas projects in the state of Western Australia allowed to send gas for export.
Mitsui took the stake in Waitsia in the Perth Basin in late 2017 via a takeover of AWE. The first export of gas was planned for 2023 but that was delayed after the collapse of an engineering company hired to build the gas processing facility.
The field will send a total of 7.5 million tonnes of gas to North West Shelf until 2028 under a deal struck in 2020.
(Reporting by Helen Clark; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
