Sydney
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Chief Minister, Ito-san, Mr Sangster, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
As Minister for Tourism I extend a very warm welcome to you all and to our international guests in particular.
As Minister for Resources and Energy, can I say how pleased I am to be attending this signing ceremony today.
Australia is in the midst of a gas rush - the likes of which we have never seen before in our history.
In the few short years since 2007 we have seen over $140 billion committed in new LNG developments.
Together, these projects will almost quadruple our existing LNG export capacity by 2016.
They mean that by 2016 Australia will rival Qatar for the top spot as the world’s largest exporter of LNG.
The International Energy Agency forecasts that globally, demand for gas will continue with production set to increase by over 50 per cent by 2035.
And that demand is particularly strong here in the Asian region and from our friends in Japan.
Australia has a long and proud trading relationship with Japan - the premier market for LNG in the world.
Japan was a foundation customer, and a foundation investor, in some of our biggest resource sectors.
It won’t come as any surprise to you that I am a frequent visitor there.
It is only 22 years since the very first Australian LNG exports and they went to Japan to some of the very same companies that are today to sign the foundation contracts for the Ichthys Project.
This year Australia became the largest supplier of LNG to Japan.
The Ichthys project, should it receive a positive final investment decision – something that I know all of us here are keenly anticipating – would be one of Australia's largest resource projects and represent Japan's biggest single financial investment in this country.
And of course equally welcome is the investment from Total of France.
France also has a long trade and investment relationship with Australia and their renewed interest in investments in Australia will, I believe, by to our mutual benefit.
After all Total is one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies.
In INPEX it finds a partner that has been active in Australia for 25 years.
Together these joint venture partners are pursuing a project to develop one of Australia’s largest known offshore gas fields.
A project that will create over 2,000 jobs during the five year construction phase, and 300 jobs when fully operational onshore, with a further 1,000 jobs during construction and 400 during operations offshore.
The Sales and Purchase Agreements entered into with Tokyo Electric Power Company, Tokyo Gas, Kansai Electric Power Company, Osaka Gas and Kyushu Electric Power Company bring the project one step closer.
The contracts are for the supply of 4 million tonnes of LNG per annum.
I sometimes fear in these extraordinary times that the sheer scale of these numbers is not well-appreciated.
These contracts alone will add around $70 billion in LNG export revenues to Australia’s economy – almost seven times the current total annual value of all Australian LNG exports.
And I welcome your confidence in Australia, as both a proven, reliable supplier and as an investment destination.
The Australian Government has been involved with the Ichthys Project from the start.
It was the government on behalf of the people of Australia which in 1998 granted a permit -- WA-285-P under international tender -- to INPEX to explore in the Browse Basin.
During 2000 and 2001 three exploration wells resulted in the discovery of an extremely promising gas and condensate field which led INPEX Corporation to immediately contemplate how best to commercialise the resource.
Since then the government has been involved in the various stages of the INPEX and Total Ichthys Joint Venture.
We have assisted the project partners to develop a comprehensive environmental management program and most recently, in the past few days in fact, we've made a production licence offer for the Ichthys gas field development.
So you can see that Australian governments at the Federal, Territory and State levels have been closely involved.
We are as keen as project proponents to ensure the success of LNG developments because of their significance to a number of aspects of Australia's energy policy.
Returning to Ichthys and today's events I've heard Seiya Ito say that in practice the Project is really three projects in one -- a central processing facility which is likely to be one of the largest ever built, a 42-inch gas export pipeline which is the longest in the Southern Hemisphere and an onshore gas plant in Darwin, which will, when it comes into production, will be Australia's fifth export LNG facility supplied by conventional gas.
The Ichthys Project has a design capacity to produce 8.4 million tonnes of LNG each year, about 1.6 million tonnes of LPG a year as well as 100,000 barrels of condensate a day peak.
This latter output is important for the Ichthys field contains the biggest discovered volume of condensate since the discovery of the Bass Strait oil and gas fields in the 1960s.
But what makes Ichthys such a global landmark venture is that it will be the first time a Japanese company operates an LNG development.
I note that in the past few weeks INPEX has stated publicly that it is on track with its Final Investment Decision considerations.
It would be hard here today -- with the signing of export contract for 4 million tonnes or nearly half the planned annual Darwin output -- not to believe that INPEX and Total will commit to the Ichthys Project in next few weeks.
It is something I very much look forward to.
Ladies and gentlemen I now would like to invite representatives of the companies involved to sign the documents that cement the foundation customers of the Ichthys Project.