$3 billion share in Australian LNG plant at auction CANBERRA, Australia, July 5 (UPI) -- Australia's Origin Energy and U.S. company ConocoPhillips will auction a $3 billion stake in their LNG plant. The money raised from the sale of a share in the joint venture's Australia Pacific LNG plant at Gladstone and its associated coal-seam gas fields will be used to help fund a second stage of the facility's $23 billion development, The Australian reported Thursday. Origin Energy Chief Executive Officer Grant King announced his company and ConocoPhillips had agreed to sell a 15-percent stake in the project, reducing their individual stakes from 37.5 percent to 30 percent apiece, but King declined to say when the auction would occur. Currently Sinopec owns the remaining 25 percent of the APLNG project. Based on the $2.5 billion Sinopec initially paid for a 10-percent stake in the project in early 2012 before increasing its share to its current level, analysts project a 15-percent stake in the APLNG project would be worth about $3.2 billion.