Woodside Petroleum Ltd. (WPL.AU) Chief Executive Don Voelte said Tuesday that Woodside is "comfortable" in maintaining its 50% stake in the Browse liquefied natural gas venture.

He said Woodside won't have to "barter away" any equity to progress the LNG development, which could be in production in the period 2015 to 2017.

The chief executive also played down joint venture disputes at Browse over where to process gas from the field, located offshore Western Australia.

He said that differences of opinion weren't uncommon in a joint venture involving five large oil and gas companies.

Alongside operator Woodside, the Browse partners are BHP Billiton (BHP), BP PLC (BP), Chevron Corp. (CVX), and Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN).

Woodside and the state government of Western Australia want the Browse LNG processing plant built at a proposed LNG hub at James Price Point in the Kimberley region.

Other Browse partners are yet to select their preferred location, and want to explore the possibility of piping gas to existing North West Shelf infrastructure in the Pilbara region.

Voelte dismissed media speculation that Browse, estimated to contain 14 trillion cubic feet of dry gas and 370 million barrels of condensate, may cost up to A$50 billion to develop in the Kimberley.

He declined to make an estimate, but said the cost of the Kimberley option would be only a "small fraction" higher than the Pilbara alternative.

And piping the gas to the North West Shelf would delay initial production from Browse until 2022-23, with "full load" production unlikely before 2028.

"That's a long time to wait for the citizens of Australia to make money off that project," he said.

In contrast, the Kimberley plan could see first production in the 2015-2017 timeframe, he said.

A final investment decision on Browse may be made 12 or 18 months after a decision is made by Chevron Corp. (CVX) on its Gorgon project, Voelte said.

Chevron has said it plans to make the decision by the end of the year.

Turning to Woodside's 90%-owned Pluto venture, due to ship its first LNG in early 2011, Voelte said that Woodside wants to expand Pluto by "four or five times the size of the initial project".

Woodside is "progressing" work on a Pluto expansion and is in talks with a "couple of companies" on sourcing third-party gas.

But Woodside is confident of locating more of its own gas, and has 39 exploration wells planned for the region.

"We've actually scheduled 24 of those wells over the next six quarters, so we think that the base plan is we'll find plenty of gas on our own," he said.

Last week, Woodside said that front-end engineering and design, or FEED, work on a second and third train at Pluto has already commenced.

A final investment decision on a second train could occur in late 2010, and on a third train by late 2011, the company said.

-By Stephen Bell, contributing to Dow Jones Newswires; 61-8-9244-4243; sgbell@bigpond.com