Inside this issue

Australia’s Northern Capital

The landscape also provides the economy’s surprising diversity. Abundant mineralisation across the terrain has created a valuable mining industry, with enormous opportunities still awaiting further exploration. The Territory’s 900km coastline is the launching pad to a thriving offshore oil and gas industry, with expanding support and services delivered from Darwin, the Territory capital. The sea is also the source of a sustainable fish and seafood industry that feeds the markets of southern Australia and a growing international export trade.

The expansive Territory landscape is also the home to a century-old cattle industry that sees free-roaming stock fed on native grasses, exported from the busy Port of Darwin to clients across South-East Asia. There is fertile, well watered land where a wide array of fruit and vegetable crops are grown for local consumption and export. And the landscape is itself a contributor to the economy, with visitors from the world over arriving to experience its unique natural wonders.

That wealth generated from the Territory landscape is today providing important opportunities to its Asian neighbours. Over the past decade, Darwin has shed the redundant tag of ‘isolated capital’ to become Australia’s most important northern export centre, earning the new moniker of ‘Gateway to Asia.’ The Territory capital’s billion dollar Waterfront Project, which includes the Darwin Convention Centre, has changed the face of the city’s central business district.

The past decade has also seen the Territory capital become an important regional gas hub. The construction of ConocoPhillips’ Darwin LNG plant, and the 500km undersea pipeline to its Bayu- Undan offshore facility in the Timor Sea, has placed Darwin on the international energy world map. Following its success in the manufacture of liquefied natural gas, the city attracted Japanese energy giant INPEX and its French joint venture partner Total to begin construction on the Territory’s most ambitious project to date —the US$34 billion Ichthys LNG project. It is a complex development that will see a 900km pipeline stretch from the Browse Basin off the Western Australian coast to the LNG plant in Darwin harbour.

Supporting the LNG operations and offshore oil and gas industry is Darwin’s wide array of service and supply operators providing for the specialised needs of these valuable industries. With demands on the service and supply sector growing, the Territory Government tendered for the construction and operation of a dedicated Marine Supply Base that will provide a more efficient launch space for marine tenders supplying the offshore rigs. The base backs onto the East Arm Precinct, a spacious industrial area, the local home of companies supporting the maritime industries.

International energy production and mining activity has super-charged the Territory economy. LNG manufacture and export, along with the mineral boom, has attracted thousands of skilled workers to the Territory. As of this writing, the Territory has the lowest rate of unemployment in Australia at just 3 per cent of the workforce unemployed. Access Economics, Australia’s leading economic forecaster, says: “Like Western Australia, the value of definite projects in the Northern Territory is now on the rise, and there is plenty of potential for a more significant expansion to take effect over the next couple of years.”

The sprawling Territory landform and the enigmatic sea to its north create economic opportunities and, coupled with a foreign investment-friendly government, an adventure awaits those who visit and discover those opportunities for themselves.