Sunshine Gas Ltd, Brisbane, plans to build a AUD 572 million LNG plant at Gladstone on Queensland’s east-central coast. Sunshine signed a heads of agreement with Japan-based Sojitz Corp. to jointly develop the 500,000tn/yr plant using gas from Sunshine’s coal seam methane project at Lacerta in Queensland’s Surat-Bowen basin. Sojitz will be operator with 70%, and Sunshine will hold 30%. Sojitz is also considering taking as much as a 20% interest in the Lacerta project. Front-end engineering and design is timed to begin during first-quarter 2008, and the aim is to achieve first production in early 2012.
