Chevron Australia's domestic gas processing plant at its 8.9mn t/yr Wheatstone LNG in Western Australia (WA) has tripped, with the plant needing to be restarted before production recovers in the coming days.
A pump fault occurred on 4 September with Chevron since identifying the cause of the disruption and beginning restart activities.
Offshore Alliance (OA) union members have offered to perform any further work required to restart the plant during periods of protected industrial action, which is planned to start at 6am (22:00 GMT) on 7 September. The OA members' strikes at Wheatstone and 15.6mn t/yr Gorgon LNG will begin as shorter duration stoppages before total work bans begin on 14 September, which are scheduled to run for two weeks until 29 September.
"Members are not seeking to negatively impact users of gas in Western Australia by engaging in protected industrial action against Chevron and have given this undertaking as a show of good faith," OA spokesman Brad Gandy said on 5 September.
The WA government confirmed on 6 September it has been advised that the industrial action will not affect Wheatstone's restart.
Chevron said on 23 August that Wheatstone's domestic gas plant will increase from 205TJ/d (5.47mn m³/d) to 215TJ/d, an increase of 5pc, with further work over the coming months to trial even higher production rates. It said modifications and subsequent high-rate production trials done over the past year "confirmed the facility was able to maintain safe and reliable domestic gas production at increased rates across a range of temperature conditions and operating environments".
Wheatstone also suffered a disruption because of technical problems in January, which cut gas supplies from the facility for several days.
WA has a domestic gas reservation policy that requires LNG exporters to reserve 15pc of all gas produced for use within the state, which is unconnected to east Australia's power and gas networks. This rule is presently under review by a parliamentary committee, although ahead of its findings the government has strengthened its prohibition on onshore gas being exported.
