The Northern Territory government has launched a concerted campaign to poach business from Western Australia and rival Perth as a regional oil and gas capital.
The Northern Territory government has launched a concerted campaign to poach business from Western Australia and rival Perth as a regional oil and gas capital.
Describing WA and Perth as "yesterday's hero and a road to nowhere", NT chief minister Paul Henderson said Darwin was the logical location for companies looking to develop oil and gas resources off the northern coast and supply the massive Asian energy market.
Mr Henderson said nowhere else in Australia could offer guaranteed industrial development sites just ten minutes drive from a modern capital city on the doorstep of the Asian market.
"The future of the industry is very much to the north of Darwin so Perth ... really is on a road to nowhere and yesterday's hero in regards to the development of the offshore industry," he said.
Mr Henderson was confident more companies would use Darwin's Wickham Point LNG precinct now servicing Conoco-Phillips' Bayu-Undan gas project in the Timor Sea, but said his government also planned a world-class marine supply base to service northern Australia's rapidly growing offshore LNG industry.
Such a development would compete directly with plans for marine supply bases at both Broome and Derby, which the WA government hopes will become the primary service hub for gas developments off the Kimberley coast.
Those plans have already been dented by the federal government's decision to overlook Premier Colin Barnett's request for assistance to fund the $500 million base planned at Point Torment, near Derby.
"Certainly we will be in the market over the next few weeks to look for a partner to assist in the development of a marine supply base in Darwin ... and take business away from Western Australia," Mr Henderson said.
He said his government did not plan to offer financial assistance to lure companies from Perth to Darwin.
"What you need to do is extend the logical arguments that so many of these developments are to the north and north-west of Darwin, we are a capital city with capital city infrastructure and a great lifestyle to support the relocation of people to Darwin," Mr Henderson said.
He said Darwin also offered a stable investment environment run by a small government "with a can do attitude", adding that business nowhere else in the country enjoyed such ready access to the chief minister.
Mr Henderson would not identify companies which he believed might be lured away from Perth, but said he had had serious discussions with potential candidates every time he travelled to WA.
Despite Mr Henderson's cheery optimism, Darwin has to date struggled to make inroads in luring major companies to relocate, with Conoco-Phillips the only multinational energy firm to make Darwin its Australian base in recent years.
Even Japan's Inpex, which plans to pipe gas from its $20 billion Ichthys LNG project in the Browse Basin to Darwin for processing, retains a Perth headquarters.
Similarly, France's GDF-Suez has established a base in Perth to manage its proposed floating LNG developments at Tern and Petrel in the Bonaparte Basin north-west of Darwin.
