Australia's Queensland Pacific Metals to focus on gas

Sydney-listed Queensland Pacific Metals (QPM) on April 22 announced a shift towards gas and energy as the core focus of its business. It will limit further expenditure on its Townsville Energy Chemicals Hub project. The move comes in response to current market conditions in the nickel industry and the growing demand for gas supply and electricity generation in Australia.

The company believes that the acquisition and successful turnaround of the Moranbah gas project has created a platform that will deliver “exceptional shareholder returns”. The Moranbah project, with substantial gas reserves, will play a pivotal role in supplying large volumes of gas to eastern Australia, it said.

“Since completing the acquisition of the Moranbah project, we have uncovered many exciting opportunities to grow production, reserves and customer sales. Accelerating these opportunities will position QPM Energy to take advantage of the tailwinds in the Australian gas and energy sector to deliver value for shareholders,” incoming CEO David Wrench commented.

QPM acquired the Moranbah gas project and other assets from the Arrow AGL joint venture. Since acquiring the Moranbah project in August 2023, QPM has delivered strong production growth, it said. The company is currently undertaking further production growth initiatives to grow gas supply to 35 terajoules/day by the end of 2024.

The company will work on development of a portfolio of new baseload and peaking generation located at the Moranbah facilities. This flexible generation portfolio is intended to use waste coal mine gas and MGP production to supply up to 300MW of power. QPM will also develop CNG and micro-LNG facilities in Moranbah and Townsville to distribute gas to north Queensland energy users.