In a world where commodities are hot one day and drop like stones the next, one is beginning to stand out as always in demand and rarely out of favour.
A map showing the thousands of gas wells sprouting in the US is one indication of the burgeoning demand. The growing opprobrium from the environmental community, which claims gas wells contaminate vast water reserves, is another.
Worldwide demand for gas remains high. Chevron has just signed on to invest US$29 billion (Dh106.51bn) in its Wheatstone liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Western Australia. Another deal has just been agreed on a major LNG processing facility in the Pilbara, also in Western Australia.
These new projects are all based onshore - that is, the gas has to be piped into a mainland facility where it is processed for shipment, but an alternative, with a vastly reduced carbon footprint, is now being developed.
Two companies in Australia, Shell and Woodside Petroleum, have pledged to construct floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) stations, structures that will dwarf even the Titanic. The first platform, which is due to be completed by Shell in 2015, is said to be virtually cyclone-proof. It will weigh six times as much as an average aircraft carrier and carry about five times as much steel as the country's Sydney Harbour Bridge.
At 488 metres in length and 74 metres wide, it will be permanently tethered to the sea floor off the Western Australian coast - about 450km north-west of Broome.
Shell and Woodside are seeking to extract the so-called "stranded" gas reserves off the Australian coast. A study by the country's chief scientific body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, put these reserves at an estimated 140 trillion cubic feet. That is enough gas to keep both companies happily extracting for the next 100 years.
The facility will serve the Prelude and Concerto offshore natural gasfields, replacing the need to pipe the gas to the land and process it onshore.
Shell says the FLNG concept has been about six years in the thinking and is now being constructed in Korea, the only country whose shipyards have the capacity to build a hulk this size.
The second syndicate led by Woodside Petroleum (of which Shell is also a major investor) wants to use a similar platform to collect and process gas at the syndicate's Greater Sunrise gasfield in the Timor Sea between northern Australia and East Timor.
The Sunrise project has been dogged by political and strategic problems. The Timorese government has rejected the idea of a floating gas processor in principle - Timor wants a pipeline to be built to deliver the gas to East Timor, where it would be processed. Woodside, the lead investor, is not commenting on current negotiations.
Shell says many offshore gas deposits would be uneconomic to tap any other way. Like the onshore processing plants, the floating platform will cool the produced gas into a liquid, which can then be taken by gas tankers directly to world markets.
The FLNG platform negates the need for a pipeline, or a compression platform to pump the gas to shore. There is also no need for near-shore works such as dredging and jetty construction or the onshore developments such as building roads, laydown areas and accommodation facilities. The FLNG facility is far less infrastructure-intensive.
Shell would not confirm the capital costs - or the exact cost benefits of using an FLNG platform as opposed to an onshore platform. Reports have put the cost of building the platform at $10bn to $12bn. The Prelude and Concerto gasfields it will serve will produce about 3.6 million tonnes of gas a year. The entire field is said to contain about 3 trillion cubic feet of gas that will take about 25 years to extract.
"The FLNG unit is also designed for 50 years' life so can be moved on to the next development once a gasfield is depleted," a spokeswoman said. "In this way we can increase the capital efficiency of the facilities by spreading the cost over multiple developments."
Shell also says any subsequent project may benefit from schedule gains as the design standard is largely in place, resulting in a faster time to taking a final investment decision on a platform.
The Prelude project has been described as no less than a game changer for the energy industry. Australia's federal government estimates Prelude will add A$45bn (Dh166.32bn) to the country's GDP, create about 1,000 jobs and boost Australia's balance in trade by at least A$18bn over the 25-year life of the project.
