{"id":429736,"date":"2026-01-22T10:29:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T10:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/429736\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T10:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T10:29:13","slug":"first-lng-cargo-from-santos-barossa-gas-project-bound-from-darwin-to-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/429736\/","title":{"rendered":"First LNG cargo from Santos Barossa gas project bound from Darwin to Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a series of delays stretching more than a year, Santos has announced the first gas from its $5.6 billion Barossa project will be shipped from Darwin, bound for the Sakai terminal in Japan.<\/p>\n

The company announced today in its quarterly report<\/a> the first shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from its offshore oil and gas project in the Timor Sea had arrived at the Darwin LNG plant.<\/p>\n

The facility made national headlines last year when the ABC revealed the storage tank had been leaking for two decades<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Barossa project, which has been widely considered crucial to the future of the Northern Territory’s economy<\/a>, was originally due to begin in the first half of 2025, but faced significant set backs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most notably, Santos was forced to pause pipeline works<\/a> for several months in 2023 after a group of First Nations elders on the Tiwi Islands initiated court proceedings over sacred sites<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Darwin gas leak kept secret from public in ‘national scandal’<\/a><\/p>\n

Documents reveal the scale of carbon pollution leaking from a Darwin LNG tank was like adding 8,300 new cars to the road every year. It is about to be filled again.<\/p>\n

Energy analyst Saul Kavonic said Santos faced further issues in commissioning the project, but that today’s announcement would be a “sigh of relief” for investors.<\/p>\n

“They just want to see that Santos gets this up and running and delivering cash flow for shareholders as quickly and safely as possible,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Kavonic also said Santos needs to show it can ramp the project up and maintain production at full rates.<\/p>\n

“Santos provided … an indication of production levels from 2027 and that actually was a downgrade compared to what investors were expecting, partly because of the delays to Barossa,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Santos also announced today its Alaskan project Pikka \u2014 which cost an additional $200 million \u2014 is on track to produce the first batches of oil in the first quarter of 2026, and then ramp up to full production by the middle of the year.<\/p>\n

However Mr Kavonic predicted the actual cash flow delivered from both projects was “likely to actually underwhelm the market”.<\/p>\n

“Investors have been waiting patiently, but with increasing frustration,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Santos says revenue is up nine per cent on the prior quarter. (ABC News: Che Chorley)<\/p>\n

Mr Kavonic said there’s also still a number of unresolved concerns about the governance of Santos following the sudden departure of chief financial officer Sherry Duhe<\/a> last October.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Santos announced a $1.2 billion sales revenue for the 2025 fourth quarter<\/a>, up nine per cent on the prior quarter, with the company’s full-year sales revenue reaching more than $4.9 billion<\/p>\n

Santos declined an interview with the ABC and did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Leaking tank could raise costs<\/p>\n

Despite a design flaw causing the Darwin LNG storage tank to leak methane for the past two decades<\/a>, regulator approvals cleared Santos to use the infrastructure to store Barossa gas until 2050, with no requirements to fix it. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The LNG tank is about 7 kilometres from Darwin. (ABC News: Pete Garnish)<\/p>\n

Kirsty Howey, the director of the Environment Centre NT said the company’s failure to remediate the leak raises serious questions.<\/p>\n

“Continuing to process gas through a leaking facility threatens Australia’s climate and the health and safety of the people of Darwin,” she said.<\/p>\n

Independent energy finance analyst Bruce Robertson said the leak should have been fixed before the first delivery of gas.<\/p>\n

He said it could result in more costs for Santos.<\/p>\n

“Gas leaks are, by their very nature, dangerous.<\/p>\n

“The Barossa is the highest-emitting LNG project in Australia by quite a margin.<\/p>\n

“Under the safeguard mechanism, I would assume that Santos would have to include those emissions [leaked] from the plant, and it would mean that Santos will have to pay more to offset its emissions.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a series of delays stretching more than a year, Santos has announced the first gas from its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,204579,99,438,5249,103579,13442,2572,11053,29429,3786,7929,225213,225214,19232,1098,16795,88006,64172,28326],"class_list":["post-429736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-barossa","tag-business","tag-company","tag-darwin","tag-darwin-lng","tag-emissions","tag-energy","tag-gas","tag-gas-field","tag-government","tag-investors","tag-leaking-tank","tag-liquified-natural-gas","tag-lng","tag-nt","tag-oil-and-gas","tag-profits","tag-santos","tag-shareholders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}