Steel Pipe Arrives in Gladstone

The first shipment of steel pipe for the Australia Pacific LNG Project arrived in the Port of Gladstone, Queensland. The pipe will be used to construct a 530-kilometer gas transmission pipeline from the gas fields in the Surat and Bowen basins to an LNG facility being developed on Curtis Island, off Gladstone.

This is the first of 22 shipments and consisted of 270,000 tonnes of steel pipe. The pipe was manufactured by Nippon Steel in Japan and then shipped to Malaysia for coating. More than 41,000 sections of pipe will be delivered over the next 13 months. Each shipment travels three months by sea to reach Australia.

The steel pipe varies in size from 12 to 42 inches in diameter and weighs up to 10.3 tonnes per section. It takes roughly four days to unload each ship, according to an Australia Pacific statement.

Most of the pipe will be transported by Queensland Rail out of the Port of Gladstone to a lay down area at Callide near Biloela, from where it will be transferred to key construction points along the proposed pipeline route. Construction of the pipeline is expected to take 24 months. 

Photo shows steel pipe discharge at Port of Gladstone in Queensland.