The Prime Minister announced on Barrow Island today that the Joint Authority has offered a total of five production licences to the Gorgon Joint Venture Partners for the Gorgon and Io/Jansz gas fields.
The Joint Authority - Federal Minister for Resources, Energy and Tourism, Martin Ferguson, and Western Australian Minister for Mines and Petroleum, Norman Moore - has also offered to renew seven retention leases over other gas fields in the Greater Gorgon area.
These fields will be developed sequentially to maintain production and extend the economic life of the project.
They will also be used to increase the supply of domestic gas into the Western Australian market, providing greater competition.
The Joint Authority has placed conditions on some of the retention leases to ensure that timely development is forthcoming.
In particular, the Joint Authority will require a mid-term commerciality review of the West Tryal Rocks gas field in two years time.
The offer of the five production licences and seven retention leases is a further critical milestone in enabling the Gorgon Joint Venture to reach a final investment decision for the entire project.
These titles provide security of tenure over Greater Gorgon gas resources to provide the property rights Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell need to sign off on Australia's biggest single investment - the $50 billion Gorgon LNG project.
The Greater Gorgon area has about 40 trillion cubic feet of gas - enough to underpin the project for more than 30 years.
With last week's final environmental approvals, the joint acceptance with the Western Australian Government of any long-term liability associated with CO2 storage, and this week's offer of titles, both the Australian Government and the Western Australian Government have now cleared the way for the final investment decision to be made.
This project will generate enormous wealth for Australia through LNG exports worth around $300 billion over the next 20 years.
It will provide jobs for 6,000 workers at the peak of construction and inject $33 billion into the economy over the next few years through the purchase of Australian goods and services.
The project will also generate about $40 billion in revenue that will fund schools, hospitals, roads and infrastructure for the state and the nation for decades to come.
Gorgon will also deliver at least 150 TJ/day of domestic gas into the Western Australian market by no later than 2015, increasing competition and easing supply side issues for Western Australian industry and households.