Australia’s Osaka Gas Gorgon (OGG) has won a US$302mn project finance loan from two local banks to finance an LNG gas project on the coast of Western Australia.

The Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) provided US$211.4mn, while The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ provided the remaining US$90.6mn.

Osaka Gas Gorgon − a wholly-owned subsidiary of Osaka Gas – and five other companies, including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Tokyo Gas Co and Chubu Electric Power, will jointly develop Gorgon, Jansz and other large-scale gas fields off the northwest coast of Western Australia.

The project will also transport gas through an undersea pipeline to a liquefaction plant on Barrow Island located.

The plant, which will become one of the world’s largest-scale LNG projects, is expected to produce and sell up to 15 million tonnes of LNG annually from the year 2014.

The global demand of LNG is expected to increase due to the growing demand in emerging market countries and heightened environmental awareness. Japan, in particular has been in need of a stable supply of LNG in recent years, making Australia, with its abundant gas reserves and political and economic stability, increasingly important as a supply source of LNG, JBIC says in a statement.