Flying the flag for Western Australia in Asia

Minister spearheads 10-day tour of Singapore, South Korea and China to promote investment in the State’s resources sector
Date: Monday, 25 May 2015

DMP team to inspect world’s largest FLNG platform during South Korea visit

Department of Mines and Petroleum Director General Richard Sellers will
travel to Asia this week as part of a State delegation to promote Western Australia’s resources sector.

Mr Sellers will accompany Mines and Petroleum Minister Bill Marmion on the 10-day trade mission, which leaves today (Monday) to visit Singapore, South Korea and China.

He said the aim was to highlight WA as being open for business during a period when global investment was tight.

“DMP officers visit Asia regularly, but having the Minister to spearhead a mission adds considerable weight to our efforts to attract investment in Western Australia,” Mr Sellers said.

The Minister will speak at the Asia Mining Congress in Singapore, open the third annual WA-Korea Energy and Resources Forum in Seoul, and hold high-level talks with government and industry leaders in China’s Shandong Province and Beijing.

The DMP team will spend a day inspecting Prelude, the world’s biggest Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) platform under construction in the South Korean port of Geoje.

Prelude, which weighs roughly six times more than the world’s biggest aircraft carrier, is the Shell company’s first deployment of technology that allows the liquefaction, storage and transfer of LNG at sea.

As part of a joint venture between the company, South Korea and Western Australia, the platform will be located in the Browse Basin in Western Australia’s far north, about 200 kilometres off the coast of the Kimberley.

In China, the team will be involved in a Rountable meeting with investors based in Shandong Province which is home to some of China’s larger investors into Western Australia’s gold, coal, and bauxite sectors.

In Beijing, the Minister’s delegation will meet with the Ministry of Land and Resources and China Geological Survey to mark the continuing cooperation between DMP’s Geological Survey of Western Australia and its Chinese counterpart.

DMP’s Geological Survey staff are now completing a four-year geoscience cooperation project with the China Geological Survey.

The two teams are working together on surveys in the Yalgoo region of Western Australia, and the China’s Beishan region.