In 1971 there was huge excitement amongst all those who had any interest whatsoever in energy. The massive North-West Shelf natural gas fields off the coast of Western Australia had been discovered, by a relative minnow in the industry. How things have changed for Woodside!
With thanks to 'petroleum reports.com' this is the area in question. And what a story this is, as we discovered when we visited the North West Shelf Project Visitor Centre overlooking the huge Karratha Gas Plant on Withnell Bay.
But first we had to get there from Dampier. As we back-tracked towards Karratha, we turned left here at this very large junction (controlled by traffic lights no less) to make our way a short distance out along the Burrup Peninsula.
It was not long before we could see that we were heading towards something pretty big.
And it is. The Karratha Gas Plant is one of the most advanced in the world. It covers approximately 200 hectares and includes processing 'trains' (as they are called), condensate stabilisation units, fractionation units, storage and loading facilities. (apologies for the reflection....I was photographing a display in the centre)
So just how did this all begin? With a whole lot of luck, actually. Let me quote here from one of the explanatory signs on display in the Visitor Centre.
"Woodside [was] a small Victorian company searching for oil in South-Eastern Australia when their chief geologist pointed to the potential of vast, unexplored sedimentary basins off the Western Australian coast. In 1963 exploration rights were granted to the North-West Shelf. Although searching for oil, discoveries were mainly of natural gas, and in 1971 the massive North Rankin field was found.
The North-West Shelf is now known to have the largest gas reserves in Australia, totalling about 100 trillion cubic feet." (there's another very big number for you).
But where does the luck bit come into it. Again let me quote, this time from a statement made by Dave Agostini, a Woodside employee from 1972-99 and the Operations Manager of the Karratha plant in 1999.
"The North-West Shelf was really an act of faith. It was like, in 1960, Kennedy saying: 'We'll put a man on the moon before the end of the decade.' That was an act of faith. We're going to find it. We don't know how we're going to get there yet, but we're going to do it."
And they did, in spades. This tiny Australian energy company was suddenly playing with the really big boys, and of course, is now one itself. I can clearly remember all this...we were not a wealthy family by any means, and shares were not our big thing, but guess what....Mum held a very small parcel of Woodside shares. Whoopee!
There are now several very large companies extracting natural gas from all over the shelf, including Chevron as we saw previously during our visit to Onslow. But it was Woodside which kicked this all off, and which is still a leading player.
It operates three fixed offshore platforms, the North Rankin complex, Goodwyn A and Angel, all of which are involved with the extraction of natural gas and condensate, and the Okha floating storage and offloading vessel which is used for oil production.
As the diagram shows, all the production platforms deliver their product to the Karratha plant via 135 kms or so of undersea pipelines.
Let's take a quick look at just one of these platforms, the first, the North Rankin A, to gain some idea of the scale of these operations. North Rankin A now operates in tandem with the later installed and imaginatively named North Rankin B platform, but I'll focus on 'A'.
NRA is 215 metres high, weighs 54,000 tonnes and operates in water 125 metres deep. It has served as the central hub of the offshore gas production since 1984. Hopefully this photograph of a model of the two platforms
gives you some idea of the way in which these work. As you can see there is much more under the surface than above it. The operating platform of North Rankin A is supported by legs which are secured to the seabed by 32 piles. The extraction wells are all connected to the surface by the mass of piping seen inside the outer structure of the platform.
And how much gas are we taking about here? Between them, North Rankin A and B deliver up to 60,000 tonnes of gas......daily.....and remember this is just one well....there are oodles of them scattered across the NW Shelf. (I'm over superlatives!)
It's no wonder that the onshore processing plant is the size it is. Everything about this whole operation is on a grand scale, even the pipes which bring the gas to shore.
We were able to gain a wonderful view across the entire plant from large viewing windows in the Visitor Centre, but I've not included my photos here....the composite taken from the display (above) provides a much clearer picture of the size of this complex.
This leads to the obvious question, one which had exercised my mind for some time. What does a gas plant actually do? In simple terms it sorts out all the various components of the raw natural gas intake and prepares them for distribution either by sea or by overland pipeline.
These products include domestic gas, liquefied natural gas (LNG - predominately methane), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG - propane and butane), and condensate (a very light crude oil which condenses out of natural gas when it encounters normal atmospheric conditions).
And this leads to the next two questions....how is this done, and why liquefy? Taking LNG for example, the processes within the LNG train include the removal of carbon dioxide, water and mercury from the raw product, the separation of heavier gases and a liquefaction process which reduces the temperature of the gas to minus 161 degrees C, the cold temperature boiling point of methane. For any who have a fundamental knowledge of physics, the answer to the second question is easy.....at -161C the gas in its liquid form occupies but one six-hundredth of the space it would in its gaseous state.
This means of course that one LNG bulk tanker can now transport what it would otherwise take 600 vessels to do...pure practical and economic sense. Here, courtesy of 'gastoday.com.au ' is a shot of one of these odd looking gas carriers, with it spherical LNG pressure containers, loading from the storage tanks at the Karratha plant.
And finally, just how much of this stuff does the Karratha plant produce? At the risk of boring you to death with statistics (and with the promise that this will be the last of them apart from a few relating to the Port Headland operations) I invite you to contemplate these numbers.
The Karratha Gas Plant knocks out, on a daily basis, 12,000 tonnes of domestic gas (which is piped all the way south to Perth and Bunbury and points beyond and between), 52,000 tonnes of LNG, 4,200 tonnes of LPG and 165,000 tonnes of condensate. No further comment is necessary I believe.
Before we leave this extraordinary place, a word about 'the flare'. Apart from the wonderful spectacle these can produce in a night sky, they have a much more important function. The ability to flare off excess gas is a critical part of maintaining plant safety, both from production and maintainence standpoints.
At the Karratha plant there are several flare towers. That pictured above, the largest of them (by metres) is so high it can be seen over the hills from the golf course in distant Karratha township.
Of course all this offshore infrastructure requires constant servicing. Between Parker Point and the Karratha Gas Plant is yet another large port area from which quite sizable vessels provide necessary support and resupply to all the offshore platforms.
Whew! I don't know about you dear reader, but my mind is just about completely clogged with the facts and figures and the sights and sounds of enterprises here in the north-west of WA about which I had previously had some knowledge, but no real understanding. Iron ore, salt and gas on a production scale of gargantuan proportions. And we still have Port Headland to come!
Let us leave this district with a short glance at the town in the centre of it all, Karratha...and I mean a short glance. To be frank, by this stage of our week long visit to the area I was suffering from 'tourist overload'! That aside, we were both quite underwhelmed by Karratha.
Indeed we were not at all surprised to learn that this rapidly expanding Pilbara town was purpose built. It was established in 1968 to accommodate the burgeoning Hammersly Iron workforce involved in the processing and exporting of the mined ore.
In a way, the birth of Karratha could be said to have been something of an accident of topography. You may have noted (but I'll bet you haven't!) that it came into being at about the same time as Dampier, and that both towns were specifically constructed to house the Hammersly Iron workforce. Dampier was first, and obviously conveniently located close to Parker Point, but there was a snag.....the hilly surrounds of Dampier were not user friendly as far as an expanded township was concerned, and this was badly needed.
Enter the flat coastal plains at the southern end of the Burrup Peninsula, and welcome Karratha.
As this rather dated aerial shot (filched from the Internet with thanks to the Shire authority) demonstrates, Karratha has been built on the flat land between a ridge of hills and the shores of Nikol Bay. (as an aside, this photo also shows the vast expanses of the nearby salt evaporation pans to the west of town about which I have spoken earlier).
Once all the iron ore industry workers were settled there was a period of relative growth stability in the town, but this all changed with the development of the North-West Shelf gas and oil project.
In the late 1980's the builders returned to Karratha. More and more housing sprang up in what was becoming an very elongated township. The sprawl of Karratha now hosts nine distinct suburbs, with more on the way, and a population nearing 20,000.
We did not bother with photos of 'the burbs', but did take the time to climb to the lookout on one of the hills overlooking the town for a panoramic view.
As you would expect, a series of shots was the order of the day, beginning by looking to the east
then panning left
and left again,
before we made the descent back to the flat land again.
Karratha remains the youngest and fastest growing town in the Pilbara. Real estate here is amongst the most expensive in the State. From what we saw this is a clear example of the law of supply and demand.....our observations would indicate that there is no reason to live here other than its proximity to the nearby places of employment.
Understandably, Karratha supports the largest shopping, commercial and retail hub in the Pilbara, and it was primarily for that reason (and the fact that we had to transit the town to reach the Burrup peninsula) we visited at all. Despite the recent downturn in the mining industry, commercial development is continuing in the CBD, with additions to the existing high rise apartment and shopping complexes under construction.
The fact that a town of this size hosts six primary schools, two secondary, a TAFE and a remote university facility, probably speaks volumes for the demographic of Karratha. It houses a population which is the epitome of that hackneyed political phrase 'young Australian working families'. Even with the downturn in the mining industry, the port is still loading, the salt continues to crystallise, and the gas will be flowing for years to come. Its future looks assured.
Having said that, however, Liz and I both agreed that the expanding ten kilometre sprawl of Karratha did nothing to encourage us to tarry longer. This is a brash, bustling town, indisputably necessary, and a far better way to manage a large local workforce than by using the FIFO system, but from what we saw (admitted limited) Karratha is not 'our kind of place'.
Let's leave with a quick look at the Karratha Airport. Thanks to the industrial activity in the area, and the fact that the local resident workforce is bolstered by a significant FIFO component, this is the second busiest in Western Australia (thanks to the Karratha shire for this aerial).
And here, Karratha becomes personal for your scribe. As we were standing at the salt pan lookout, which is on the approach path to the main runway, trying to get our heads around
the scale of what we were seeing and reading, including the the length of an ore train which rumbled by (it was impossible to get it all in one photo....and even this is a poor attempt... the train stretches from one side of the frame to the other....the dark line between the far end of the salt pan and the poles on the highway.....some 250 waggons and over 2 kilometres in length!)
a helicopter on approach to landing brought back many personal memories. My very good friend and our first SA Surf Lifesaving helicopter rescue pilot (circa 1974) Pete Hadden, with whom I flew numerous missions in an old Bell 47 'bubble' (and with whom I raised more than one glass after a hot day in the office), moved to WA many years ago to become part of the North-West Shelf operations.
He flew Super Pumas for Bristows, ferrying crews to and from the offshore platforms for the past 30 years or so, operating out of Karratha on a week on week off basis (an original FIFO!)
To my great sorrow, Pete died just before we arrived here in the west over 18 months ago. I had actually introduced him to his wife Jeanette at the Glenelg Surf Club eons ago and was very much looking forward to catching up. But at least Liz and I were able to renew acquaintances with Jeanette when we visited her in Kalamunda on our last stay in Perth. Vale 'Captain Flaps'.
This brings to an end our Point Samson stay and our exploration of the history and extraordinary mining and gas operations in the Karratha region. We had had a hectic seven days. With the benefit of hindsight we would have planned more time here, but at least we now know what our focus will be on a return visit.
Our next stop is at Port Headland, a decidedly 'RV unfriendly town' if travelling with a pet. We debated at some length as to whether we would bother staying here or not, but I was very keen to at least get some feel for the operations at what is said to be the most active export port in the country.
We settled for two nights......and for the first time on our travels we ignored the 'no pets' rule at a caravan park. Just how did we fare? Stay tuned!
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