Herbert Smith Freehills has advised APA Group on the development of a new gas transmission pipeline and gas-fired power station to supply energy to the Gruyere Gold Project in Western Australia.

The APA Group recently announced that it has entered into contracts with the Gruyere Joint Venture (a 50:50 joint venture between Gold Road Resources Limited and Gold Fields Limited) to design, build, own and operate a 198km gas pipeline (the Yamarna Gas Pipeline) and a 45MW gas-fired power station to supply power to the Gruyere Gold Project, located approximately 200km north-east of Laverton, and to the north of APA’s Eastern Goldfields Gas Pipeline.

APA has also entered into a 15 year gas transportation agreement and a 15 year electricity supply agreement, in addition to securing underlying tenure arrangements with the Gruyere Joint Venture, to underpin its participation in the project.

Commissioning of both the pipeline and power station is expected to occur in late 2018, to align with the expectations of the Gruyere Joint Venture to produce first gold in early 2019.

The Herbert Smith Freehills team, led by partners Rob Merrick and Dan Zador and senior associates Nathan Colangelo, Maja La Rosa, David Rowan and Chris Wright, advised APA on the full suite of contractual arrangements. The team worked closely with Amanda Cheney, Theadora Dyer and Liam Dunstan from APA’s in-house team.

Rob Merrick commented, “We are delighted to have had the opportunity to work closely with the APA team across both the Power Generation and Transmission businesses on their participation in the Gruyere Joint Venture. The APA team has worked incredibly hard on this project, through both a competitive bid process and negotiations with the Gruyere Joint Venture over the last few months.

“This project further demonstrates our team’s ability to work with clients of APA’s calibre in providing integrated energy solutions to a range of commodity developments around Australia.”

Herbert Smith Freehills has recently advised on a number of other significant energy transactions including advising:

• APA Group on the acquisition of the Darling Downs solar farm development project from Origin Energy.
• Alinta Energy Limited on the sale of 100% of the company to Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, a Hong Kong-based company majority owned by the Cheng Family.
• IFM Investors and AustralianSuper in their successful unsolicited proposal for the acquisition of Ausgrid from the NSW Government.
• Infrastructure Capital Group (ICG) and the Energy Infrastructure Trust (EIT) on the successful acquisition of the Bald Hills Wind Farm.