THE CHIEF Minister Paul Henderson will visit Japan next week to continue to build on the Northern Territory’s relationship with INPEX and meet with other resource industry bodies.
Henderson will hold talks with INPEX President Naoki Kuroda and other senior INPEX executives. He says INPEX’s $23 billion project is the largest private sector investment in Northern Territory history and will provide financial certainty for decades to come.
The Minister says the government is working with Inpex to ensure the Territory can take advantage of all the benefits and opportunities an investment of this size will bring. He says bringing gas onshore to Darwin will have significant social and economic advantages in the form of jobs, infrastructure, Indigenous development and local business growth.
Henderson claims INPEX’s involvement in the Territory has added to the business confidence the state has been able to sustain throughout the global financial crisis.
The Minister will also visit ConocoPhillips, which operates the Darwin LNG plant that processes gas from the Bayu-Undan field in the Timor Sea. Henderson says the Bayu-Undan field is a very important one for Japan. ConocoPhillips provides about 3 million tonnes of LNG to Japan every year, enough to power approximately 5 million homes.
Meetings with Bayu-Undan’s customers Tokyo Gas and Tokyo Electric Power Company, as well as the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) are also on the agenda as is a visit to senior executives from Itochu, which has a long-standing relationship with the Territory and is a joint venture partner in Western Desert Resources’ iron ore project in the Roper Bar region.
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