Something New, Something Old: Australia’s Greenfield LNG Projects Grow Capacity While Depleted Wells Drive Decommissioning

_ Is Australia losing its edge as an LNG superpower? In 2025, LNG exports from the “Land Down Under” dropped nearly 3% as the US and Qatar captured a larger share of the Chinese market by bringing new capacity onstream while Australia’s remained flat. Toppled in 2023 by the US as the world’s top LNG exporter, Australia now ranks third after Qatar. New facilities and offshore gas fields are coming onstream in Western Australia as it seeks to leverage offshore megaprojects such as Scarborough and the Gorgon expansions to secure regional energy supply under long-term contracts, particularly with Japan and South Korea, where Australia’s share of LNG imports remains high. Exports, Imports: West vs. East East Australia tells a different story. Decommissioning is transforming the Bass Strait/Gippsland Basin offshore Victoria, where oil first flowed in 1969. Over the years, the region supplied over 50% of Australia’s crude oil and 40% of the east coast’s gas, according to the government’s National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA). In 2026, Australia’s decommissioning pipeline is forecast to peak at 440 wells or more, up from the 160 wells targeted in 2021. That year, Canberra tightened regulations and established the research not-for-profit Centre of Decommissioning Australia. Its members included National Energy Resources Australia (NERA), BHP Petroleum (since merged with Woodside), Chevron Australia, ExxonMobil’s Esso Australia, Santos, Vermillion, and Woodside. Although Geoscience Australia reported record production in 2024 of 1, 593 PJ, largely from coal-seam gas from Queensland’s Surat and Bowen basins, east Australia’s gas reserves continue to decline. The gains are being outweighed by the burgeoning numbers of legacy natural gas wells reaching the end of their lives and now are being plugged and abandoned. The resulting drop in natural gas production has spurred the government to require east coast LNG producers to reserve 15 to 25% of their output for the domestic gas market starting in 2027. The policy is intended to protect against gas shortfalls and will affect how producers such as Santos (Gladstone LNG), Shell (Queensland Curtis LNG), and ConocoPhillips, Origin Energy, and Sinopec (Australia Pacific LNG) do business. In a Rystad Energy podcast in October 2025, Noah Brenner, vice president, analytics, at the Norwegian data and intelligence firm, remarked that in terms of supplying Australia’s domestic market, it is “not a matter of if, but when” Canberra will need to import LNG to sidestep an energy crisis. Australia is readying infrastructure to do exactly that, with these LNG import projects targeting the government’s deadline: - Renewable energy operator Squadron Energy’s Port Kembla Energy Terminal in New South Wales, a floating storage regasification unit (FSRU) with a capacity of 200–500 TJ/day, is scheduled to start up in 2027. - Refinery operator and fuel distributor Viva Energy is leveraging existing infrastructure in Victoria to regasify imported LNG beginning in 2027–2028. - Gas infrastructure developer Venice Energy is developing the Outer Harbor LNG import terminal near Adelaide. Another FSRU is targeted to become operational in 2027.