Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline

The Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline (DBNGP) is the longest natural gas pipeline in Australia. It is 660mm in diameter, which also makes it one of Australia's largest in terms of transmission capacity. At the time of its commissioning in 1984, it was one of the longest gas pipelines in the world.

The pipeline runs from a point near Withnell Bay, on the Burrup Peninsula near Dampier, to Bunbury in the south-west of the State. It carries natural gas, most of which enters the pipeline at the domestic gas plant associated with the North West Shelf Venture project. The other main inlet point is approximately 135 km south of Dampier, where one of the sales gas pipelines from Varanus Island connects with the DBNGP. In June 2008, following a pipeline rupture and explosion at the Varanus Island facility, the DBNGP carried additional volumes of gas from the North West Shelf plant to the south-west of the state, for a period of several months. See: 2008 Western Australian gas crisis

As a single trunkline it is 1530 km long, extending from the Burrup Peninsula in the Pilbara region, to Bunbury in the south west of Western Australia. It supplies gas to industrial, commercial and residential customers in Perth and major regional centres along the pipeline route. It is covered by Western Australian pipeline license PL-40. A number of lateral pipelines are connected to this pipeline, most of which are covered by separate licenses, although PL-40 itself covers the main trunkline and some laterals totalling a length of 1789 km.

The idea of a pipeline to transport gas from the North West Shelf to the south-west of Western Australia had its origins in 1975, following the discovery of large offshore reserves by WAPET and woodside Petroleum. Around this time, the State Energy Commission of WA reviewed the state's future gas requirements in conjunction with the partners in the North West Shelf consortium. The developers of the North West Shelf were in the preliminary stages of planning a system of production facilities based on the Rankin and Goodwyn fields (located about 130 km off the coast of Dampier), linked to an LNG processing plant and a domestic gas plant situated at Withnell Bay. As the state government had access to more attractive interest rates than the commercial venturers, the state agreed to fund and build (through SECWA) a 1540 km gas pipeline to transport the output from the domestic gas plant. In addition, SECWA entered into long term (20 year) 'take-or-pay' contracts with the North West Shelf partners, in which SECWA agreed to pay for fixed volumes of gas which exceeded the market demand for gas in the south west.

...
Wikipedia