Inpex Holdings Inc., Japan's largest oil explorer, won the consent of Aboriginal landowners in Australia's northwest to proceed with plans for a liquefied natural gas plant.
The agreement will lead to talks on land use, job creation and environment studies for a 10 billion Australian dollar ($8.6 billion) natural gas processing and liquefaction facility on Maret Islands, Melinda Hayes, a spokeswoman for Inpex's Browse project, said Thursday from Perth.
Inpex is the first of several companies, including Woodside Petroleum Ltd., seeking to tap the Browse Basin gas fields off the Kimberley coast. Projects by Inpex and Woodside face opposition from environmental and tourism groups concerned about the effects on Australia's undeveloped Kimberley region.
"It enables us to work together in developing the Maret Islands that provides a framework for addressing indigenous disadvantage in the region, while keeping the environmental footprint to a minimum," Wayne Bergmann, executive director of Kimberley Land Council, said in an e-mail statement.
Inpex and Total SA plan to build an LNG plant on the uninhabited Maret Islands to process gas from the Ichthys field.
Woodside, Australia's second-biggest oil and gas producer, said last month that it may consider piping gas from the Browse fields to a proposed LNG plant 950 km away in Burrup Peninsula.
Inpex may receive approvals from federal and state governments and environmental authorities by the end of this year, Hayes said.
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