The Prime Minister of Australia, The Hon Malcolm Turnbull, will open LNG 18 in Perth in April this year – the biggest LNG conference and exhibition ever held in Australia and the world’s largest event on the 2016 global LNG calendar.
Mr Turnbull will join Western Australian Premier, The Hon Colin Barnett, The Hon Josh Frydenberg, Federal Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia, and an outstanding line-up of highly respected international LNG experts as plenary and concurrent speakers at LNG 18, 11-15 April.
Plenary session speakers include leaders from three of the largest participants in the global LNG industry – Mr Ben van Beurden (CEO, Royal Dutch Shell), Mr John Watson (CEO and Chairman of Chevron) and Woodside Ltd CEO Mr Peter Coleman – who will share centre stage when they join forces in Perth to jointly open LNG 18.
Mr Grant King, Chairman of the LNG 18 National Organising Committee and Managing Director of Origin Energy, said today that the Prime Minister’s decision to address delegates at the prestigious event attested to the importance to the national economy of the recent and rapid expansion in Australia’s LNG industry, including new projects on the nation’s northwest, northern and eastern coastlines.
“The domestic and international backing for these new Australian LNG projects represents the largest concentration yet, in Australia’s history, of private capital investment,” Mr King said.
“The Prime Minister’s participation in LNG 18 sends a strong message therefore to the global investment market about the status of this sector and its emerging importance to the overall Australian economy,” he said.
The triennial International Conference and Exhibition on LNG is owned and presented by the International Gas Union (IGU), the Gas Technology Institute (GTI) and the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR). The host IGU member for LNG 18 is the Australian Gas Industry Trust (AGIT) in conjunction with the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) which is the event’s supporting association.
LNG industry professionals from over 70 countries and hundreds of additional gas industry people will attend the 11-15 April conference for LNG 18, the prestigious triennial event that sets the agenda for LNG discussions throughout the world.
The exhibition component of LNG 18 will showcase more than 250 key companies and organizations.
Mr King said the Conference Program, with its opening plenary topic: “The Transformation of Gas“, will address critical topics currently posed for the LNG industry with global and relevant focus.
“LNG 18’s objective is to harness the knowledge, lessons and experience of the past to ensure that LNG plays an appropriate role in supplying a reliable, competitively-priced and sustainable source of energy to support growing economies, a better environment and rising living standards for the communities it services,” Mr King said.
“Participating in LNG 18 will provide attendees with the opportunity to strengthen ongoing partnerships and form new relationships with their industry colleagues as well as hear from leaders about the future direction of LNG,” he said.
INDUSTRY BACKGROUND TO LNG 18
LNG 18 is the second occasion Australia and Perth have been chosen as the venue for the world’s largest global LNG event as the city also successfully hosted LNG 12, 18 years ago.
The dramatic growth in the Australian LNG industry, since LNG 12 was held in Perth in 1998, has been striking, with the nation rocketing up the output ladder towards being on the cusp of challenging Qatar by 2020 as the world’s largest LNG exporter.
From its fledgling LNG position at the time of LNG 12 in Perth, Australia is today the third largest LNG exporter in the world and with abundant offshore and onshore petroleum reserves under development and close to key LNG demand centres in the Asia-Pacific.
In the past 12 months alone, three new LNG projects on Australia’s east coast, APLNG, GLNG and QCLNG, all based around Gladstone, have come into initial production and export stages.