AUSTRALIAN energy giant Wood-side has softened its stance on the Sunrise offshore gas field being developed into a liquefied natural gas facility in Timor-Leste, and outlined a number of other growth projects it will be pursuing. At Sunrise, Woodside has long maintained that it was not economically viable to build an offshore pipeline across the Timor Trench and a new onshore LNG facility in Timor-Leste. Woodside's position has been that it would be an upstream investor in Sunrise but not a midstream or LNG investor. At the company's Investor Day on 1 December, chief executive Meg O'Neill said it was now "appropriate to reopen the concept evaluation" on the Timor-Leste option. "The Timorese are very keen to have that development in country and we recognise it is an important national project for them." She said the company's pipeline feasibility studies of going across the trench had always shown it was technically possible, but "the challenge has always been the economics". As far as the onshore LNG facility in Timor-Leste was concerned, she pointed to modular construction as an example of a different approach.
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