Australia’s biggest LNG plants offline due to cyclone
A powerful tropical cyclone in Western Australia has disrupted production at the country’s two largest liquefied natural gas facilities operated by Chevron and Woodside, worsening a global supply shortage caused by conflict in the Middle East.
Australia became the world’s second-largest exporter of LNG after Qatar halted production in March after Iranian attacks damaged its facilities.
Global LNG flows from the Middle East were also disrupted by Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz.
Chevron said it was working to restart production at its Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG facilities in Western Australia following disruptions caused by Tropical Cyclone Narelle, a category three storm that passed over the coast on Friday.
Gorgon is Australia’s largest LNG export facility, producing 15.6 million tonnes per annum through three processing trains; The smaller Wheatstone consists of two trains producing 8.9 million tonnes.
Woodside also said production at the Karratha gas plant was disrupted by the cyclone.
The gas plant is the onshore processing facility for the North West Shelf, Australia’s oldest and second largest LNG project, producing 14.3 million tonnes per annum compared to 16.9 million tonnes per annum following the closure of one of its five production trains.
MST Marquee analyst Saul Kavonic estimated the cyclone disrupted Australia’s LNG supply of more than 30 million tonnes per year.
He said more than a quarter of global LNG supply was affected by the shock from the Middle East.
“This will further exacerbate gas market tightness in Asia and Europe, especially if it takes more than a few days for production levels in Australia to return to normal,” Kavonic said. he said.
A Chevron Australia spokesman said an outage occurred at the Wheatstone platform, located about 225 kilometers off the west coast of Australia, on Thursday, causing onshore gas production to be suspended.
“All personnel on the Wheatstone Platform were demobilized ahead of the tornado flyby, which was operated remotely from our Perth office on Tuesday afternoon,” the spokesperson said.
Three hours later, an outage shut down one of three LNG production trains at the Gorgon plant on Barrow Island, about 50km off the coast.
“We will resume full production at both facilities once it is safe to do so,” a Chevron Australia spokesman said.
Woodside said production at the North West Shelf project would restart once it was able to return workers to offshore facilities.
It was stated that activities continue at the Macedonia domestic gas facility and Pluto LNG facility.
“Woodside will update the market if there is any material impact on production or assets,” a spokesman said.
