An exploration company headed by former Santos chairman Stephen Gerlach plans to build a coal-to-gas plant in the Northern Territory to supply gas to the east coast.
Ebony Energy said it has completed a scoping study for its Andado coal-to-gas production project, about 250 kilometres south east of Alice Springs.
The company hopes to get around a moratorium on fracking introduced by the NT government in late 2016 by mining coal and then converting it into gas in an above ground, zero discharge gasifier plant, Mr Gerlach said.
"Andado is a landmark energy infrastructure project that on completion can contribute greatly to solving the east coast gas supply and pricing and demand adjustment issues we are seeing currently," he said in a statement.
Ebony expects to supply the eastern seaboard markets with 50 Petajoules (PJ) of gas a year within the next five years from Andado.
It has signed preliminary agreements with General Electric for gasification and plant technology and with OSD Pipelines for pipeline development and operations.
The group is currently looking to raise funds through a pre-IPO capital raising to undertake additional work at Andado and prepare for an ASX listing.
It expects to raise around $50 million through the IPO, planned for early 2018, for the $3 billion project.
Share
