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The company previously stated on its website that it plans “shutdown of greater than one half of an LNG train but not greater than one LNG train” from July 12 until August 19.
“A planned maintenance turnaround event at the Gorgon gas facility on Barrow Island, Western Australia, is underway as scheduled,” Chevron’s spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said the planned maintenance focuses on one of the facility’s three LNG production trains, train two, while the facility’s remaining two LNG production trains and domestic gas plant are operating at full rates.
The maintenance is expected to be completed on August 19.
Chevron’s Gorgon LNG plant has a production capacity of about 15.6 mtpa.
The project is a joint venture of Chevron (47.3 percent), ExxonMobil (25 percent), Shell (25 percent), Osaka Gas (1.25 percent), MidOcean Energy (1 percent), and also JERA (0.417 percent).
Chevron resumed full Gorgon LNG production on May 29 after a “mechanical fault” occurred on April 30 in the second train’s turbine.
After that, Chevron also suspended operations on the Wheatstone offshore platform on June 10 to repair the platform’s fuel gas system, and closed the LNG plant. The firm resumed operations on June 24.
The Wheatstone foundation project consists of two LNG trains with a combined capacity of 8.9 mtpa, and the domestic gas plant.
Chevron’s finance chief Eimear Bonner discussed the downtime at Gorgon and Wheatstone during the company’s second quarter earnings call on August 2.
She said Chevron still expects both of those assets to run with “good reliability this year with top quartile performance.”
“The Gorgon asset turnaround is currently underway, and that’s going really well. So we expect that to come in under the planned duration this quarter,” she said.
“And even with or despite the downtime, we expect to close the full year and deliver on the planned production for the combined Australia assets,” Bonner said.