State Resources Minister Francis Logan has opened the National Gas Separation and Sub-Sea Multiphase Flow Loop Facility, a deep water oil and gas extraction facility at Curtin University of Technology, established in collaboration with Woodside Energy.
State Resources Minister Francis Logan has opened the National Gas Separation and Sub-Sea Multiphase Flow Loop Facility, a deep water oil and gas extraction facility at Curtin University of Technology, established in collaboration with Woodside Energy.
The full text of an announcement from the University is pasted below
Curtin University of Technology has launched a unique facility that will address the technical and economical challenges associated with the extraction of offshore oil and gas reserves from deep water.
The National Gas Separation and Sub-Sea Multiphase Flow Loop Facility is the first multi-phase flow, sub-sea processing and flow assurance facility of this scale within the Australasian and Asian Pacific region.
Resources Minister Francis Logan today launched the new facility at Technology Park Bentley, highlighting its significance to the ongoing success of the State's oil and gas industry.
"Western Australia is already a major global gas provider with a number of major new off-shore LNG projects being planned to come on stream in the next five to ten years," Minister Logan said.
"The research undertaken at the National Gas Separation and Sub-Sea Multiphase Flow Loop Facility will play a vital role in supporting and developing WA's oil and gas industry as well as enhancing the industries global competitiveness.
"Deep water and remote locations present particular challenges and this facility will build on WA's capability to provide technical solutions and new technologies.
"Research undertaken at this facility will complement the range of initiatives currently underway at Technology Park Bentley and will contribute to building competitiveness in our emerging sub-sea oil and gas service cluster at the Australian Marine Complex in Henderson."
Under the leadership of Professor Robert Amin, Chair of the Woodside Research Facility at Curtin, research at the new facility will focus on pioneering the technology and competence necessary to cost-effectively transport well-stream oil and gas to a platform or to onshore processing plants and to deal with flow assurance problems.
This Facility is the result of another successful collaboration between Curtin and its long time industry partner, Woodside Energy.
Curtin's Vice Chancellor, Professor Jeanette Hacket, emphasised the importance of Curtin's collaboration with Woodside.
"Curtin is widely recognised by industry for the practical and applied nature of its research, for its focus on developing mutually beneficial partnerships," Professor Hacket said.
"Strong, strategic partnerships have proven to be vital to the growth of Curtin's research activities in the past, and we will continue to pursue these alliances in the future.
"Curtin's collaboration with Woodside has been very fruitful and has resulted in successes that include innovations to natural gas storage and dehydration."
Mr Keith Spence, Director, Enterprise Capability at Woodside Petroleum Ltd, welcomed the success of Woodside's collaboration with Curtin.
"I applaud Professor Amin and his team for their commitment in successfully building this new facility," Mr Spence said.
"The facility provides a platform for Curtin's continued leading edge strategic research into natural gas hydrates and flow assurance, and will support more near term endeavours such as testing new flow meters and flow assurance chemicals."
