(EnergyAsia, August 24 2011, Wednesday) — Australia’s Arrow Energy said it has achieved a “significant milestone” in developing a multi-billion dollar LNG plant on Curtis Island off Gladstone in Central Queensland with the award of the front-end engineering design (FEED) contract.

The engineering design, which will be undertaken by CJV, an international consortium comprising Japan’s Chiyoda Corporation, Chicago Bridge and Iron (CB&I) of the US and Italy’s Saipem will start immediately, and be carried out in Japan, the US and Australia over the next 12 months.

The plant will be designed with two trains each producing nominally four million tonnes of LNG a year for export, with potential to double the size to four trains that could produce up to 16 million tonnes of LNG each year.

Arrow said the multi-million dollar FEED contract has been awarded following an extensive tendering process that evaluated bids from four international consortia.

It follows the company’s recent award of a contract to Parsons Brinckerhoff to investigate options for power supply to surface facilities required by Arrow to develop its coal seam gas projects in the Surat and Bowen Basins.

Arrow CEO Andrew Faulkner said:

“Our FEED contractor will undertake the preliminary engineering, design and planning to provide us with a project specification for our LNG Plant and facilities. The design will use Shell’s proprietary LNG technology.

“This is an important achievement for Arrow and it comes just before the first anniversary of the company’s acquisition by a 50/50 joint venture of Royal Dutch Shell and PetroChina.

“In the past year, we have made tremendous progress with our LNG project, expanding our gas supply beyond domestic markets to position Arrow as a major CSG-LNG business.”