PERTH (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) on Friday gave the go ahead to a $10 billion (6 billion pounds)-plus liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Australia, set to be the world’s first floating LNG plant and targeted at soaring Asian demand.

The Prelude project, with a capacity of 3.6 million tonnes a year and which Shell expects to come online around 2017, would be the largest floating object in the world — longer than four soccer fields laid end to end.

PERTH, May 20 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) on
Friday gave the go ahead to its Prelude liquefied natural gas
(LNG) project in Australia, set to be the world’s first floating
LNG project and targeted at soaring Asian demand.

The project will have a capacity of 3.6 million tonnes a
year. Shell’s upstream investment in Australia would reach some
$30 billion over the next five years, the company said in a
statement.

PERTH, May 19 (Reuters) – Rio Tinto , the
world’s second-largest iron ore producer, expects global prices
to stabilise in the September quarter after a volatile start to
the year and sees only a small change in its quarterly price.
    Rio Tinto expects iron ore prices in the September quarter
to vary by only around 1 percent compared with the June quarter,
Sam Walsh, the firm’s iron ore chief told Reuters on Thursday,
underscoring a tight supply and demand balance.
    “We are seeing continuing growth in the market,” he said on
the sidelines of a meeting with Treasurer Wayne Swan, referring
to global demand for the steel-making raw material.
    Walsh’s assessment of market conditions is in contrast with
signs of slow buying from top consumer China as steel mills
there work off stockpiles of ore amid a slow down in steel
shipments. [ID:nL4E7GH0AY]

“(Price movements) indicate that we will continue with very
high prices which really are signifying that the market
continues to be tight,” Walsh said.

PERTH, May 17 (Reuters) – Australia’s thermal coal prices, a
benchmark for Asia, dropped sharply during the last week,
pressured by a lack of demand and a switch to lower-quality
coal, trade sources said on Tuesday.

Thermal coal on the globalCOAL Newcastle index closed at
$115.88 per tonne for the week to date on Monday, down from
$121.13 a week earlier.

PERTH, April 29 (Reuters) – Australia’s thermal coal prices,
a benchmark for Asia, rose slightly in the week to Friday, while
in China coal buying began to ramp up on power demand as summer
approaches.

Australia’s thermal coal prices on the globalCOAL weekly
index, a benchmark for Asia, closed at $122.23 per tonne for the
week to date on Thursday, up from $121.48 a week earlier.

By Rebekah Kebede and Edward Mcallister

PERTH/NEW YORK, April 28(Reuters)- Asian spot prices of liquefied natural
gas were seen around $12.30 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) this week,
with the high-demand summer months approaching and buying from Japan, China, and
other Asian nations expected to ramp up.

Japan, the world’s largest LNG importer, is facing mostly
hotter-than-average weather from May to July, raising the prospect of power
supply problems as it struggles to keep the electricity on in the wake of last
month’s massive earthquake and tsunami.

PERTH, April 21 (Reuters) – Oil giant Sinopec on Thursday
signed China’s second-largest gas purchase agreement, worth
around $85 billion over 20 years by one estimate, in a deal that
also gives it 15 percent of an Australian gas-export project.

Sinopec will pay $1.5 billion for the stake in the Australia
Pacific liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, completing a
preliminary deal agreed in February with project developers
ConocoPhillips and Australia’s Origin Energy .

KARRATHA, Australia (Reuters) – Demand for Australian commodities is running white-hot. So too are costs in the country’s remote mining towns, to the point where tiny huts or “dongas” can cost as much as a five-star hotel room and backpackers can earn $2,000 a week cleaning them.

Costs are becoming a big headache for Australian miners, including giants Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, which complain that labor shortages, a strong local currency and rising fuel prices threaten to slow the pace of expansion.

PERTH, April 15 (Reuters) – Australia’s thermal coal prices,
a benchmark for Asia, were unchanged during the past week as
global miner Xstrata headed back up to Japan to
renegotiate annual thermal coal contract prices.

Australia’s thermal coal on the globalCOAL Newcastle index
for the week to date was $123.25 per tonne on Thursday,
unchanged from a week earlier.

SYDNEY/PERTH (Reuters) – BHP Billiton (BHP.AX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) played down speculation it was in talks to acquire a cornerstone stake that could be worth $10.3 billion (A$9.8 billion) in Australia’s largest oil and gas firm, Woodside Petroleum (WPL.AX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), from Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

BHP Billiton, widely rumoured to be considering a takeover of Woodside, said in a short statement that there was no basis for the market talk, which has centred on BHP acquiring Shell’s 24.3 percent stake as a step toward a full takeover.