Chevron’s two Australian LNG export projects, Gorgon and Wheatstone, have shipped 87 cargoes in the first half of 2022, a rise when compared to the previous year.
Earlier this year, Chevron said it expects to have “strong” operational performance this year at its 15.5 mtpa Gorgon LNG facility in Western Australia, following several train shutdowns during the last two years. The firm also completed major turnaround on all three trains.
Besides Gorgon, Chevron completed maintenance turnaround at its 8.9 mtpa Wheatstone LNG plant near Onslow in Western Australia.
“This means now in Australia, all five trains have been through the first round of turnarounds,” Jay Johnson, Chevron’s upstream chief told analysts during the company’s second-quarter earnings call on Friday.
In addition to the Australian LNG plants, Chevron completed maintenance at its 5.2 mtpa Angola LNG plant as well.
Johnson also said that the company has shipped 87 LNG cargoes from Gorgon and Wheatstone in the first half of this year – up over 10 percent from last year even with the Wheatstone turnaround.
According to Johnson, Gorgon stage 2, the first backfill project, “is on track to deliver first gas in September.”
Capacity boost
Chevron revealed last year it had managed to increase the design capacity at the Gorgon facility by 5 percent and the Wheatstone plant by 9 percent.
Johnson said during the conference call that the company continues to focus on incremental capacity increases at both Gorgon and Wheatstone.
“And that can happen through expansion of debottlenecking where we actually expand the capacity of the facilities. But importantly, it also happens as we increase the reliability of facilities and their utilization is higher,” he said.
This year’s higher production at the plants already shows these improvements.
“We have seen capacity increases at both Wheatstone and Gorgon, and I would expect those to continue as we move forward,” Johnson said.