PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Oil and gas explorer Santos has executed a A$2-billion bilateral bank loan facility, which it would use to fund growth, including a liquid natural gas (LNG) project in Queensland.

ASX-listed Santos would use the A$2-billion loan to refinance its existing A$700-million bilateral bank loan facilities, which mature between 2011 and 2013.

“This facility provides Santos with significant additional liquidity during the scheduled construction of Gladstone LNG (GLNG) and the Papua New Guinea LNG (PNG LNG), and delivers average maturities beyond the first LNG production from the two projects,” said vice president and CFO Peter Wasow.

With the new facility, the company would have A$6-billion of available funding capacity, including cash and committed corporate and project debt facilities.

The GLNG project will involve piping coal seam gas from Santos’ eastern Queensland fields to a plant at Gladstone, where the gas will be liquefied and loaded onto ships for export.

GLNG will produce 7,2-million tons per a year of LNG through two LNG processing trains, with a maximum potential production of ten-million tons a year.

The PNG LNG project will develop the gas and condensate resources in the Hides, Angore and Juha fields and the associated gas resources in the currently operating oil fields of Kutubu, Agogo, Gobe and Moran in the Southern Highlands and Western Provinces of PNG. 

The gas will be transported by pipeline to an LNG facility with a capacity of 6,6-million tons a year, 20 km north-west of port Moresby on the coast of the Gulf of Papua.

The first LNG cargo from both these projects is expected to be shipped in 2014.

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