Australian Minister Is in Darwin for Inpex LNG Announcement

By Angela Macdonald-Smith and Gemma Daley

Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) -- A decision on the site of Inpex Holdings Inc.'s proposed A$12 billion ($10 billion) Australian liquefied natural gas project may be announced today after the government said the resources and energy minister is in Darwin.

An announcement on Inpex is expected at 11:30 a.m. Darwin time, a Resources, Energy and Tourism department official said, asking not to be named before official statements are made. The Northern Territory is expected to trump Western Australia as the site for the project, ABC News reported today.

Tokyo-based Inpex and partner Total SA are set to decide on the site for a plant to turn gas from the Ichthys field off Australia's northwest coast into LNG for export to Japan. Earlier this year they started studying a site near Darwin amid opposition to an originally preferred location on the Maret Islands off Western Australia, closer to the gas field.

Should the partners choose the Darwin site, the project will contribute more than A$50 billion to the Northern Territory economy over the next 20 years and create 4,000 jobs, the territory government estimates. It would be the largest single infrastructure project ever undertaken in the territory.

Inpex owns 76 percent of Ichthys, while Paris-based Total, Europe's third-largest oil company, owns the rest. Australia's energy minister is Martin Ferguson.

To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Macdonald-Smith in Sydney at amacdonaldsm@bloomberg.net