Chevron’s unit in Australia has completed the first major turnaround at its 8.9 mtpa Wheatstone LNG plant near Onslow in Western Australia.
A Chevron spokesperson told LNG Prime on August 30 that about 500 workers would come together to undertake Wheatstone’s first turnaround in September.
“In the fourth quarter, we expect lower production due to a planned turnaround in Wheatstone, which was completed last week,” Chevron’s finance chief Pierre Breber told analysts during the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Friday.
Including three Gorgon trains, Chevron now has five LNG trains in operation in Western Australia, he said.
Most of the maintenance works focused on the first Wheatstone LNG train.
The Wheatstone LNG facility, which shipped its first cargo in 2017, features two trains but also a domestic gas plant located at the Ashburton North Strategic Industrial Area in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
Natural gas arrives from the offshore Wheatstone, Iago, Julimar and Brunello gas fields.
Maintenance works at Wheatstone follow the completion of maintenance and repair works at three Gorgon LNG trains on Barrow Island in Western Australia.
Chevron said in July it had completed repair works on heat exchangers at the third train at its giant 15.6 mtpa Gorgon LNG facility after finding “weld quality issues” that closed the plant’s first and second train.
Also, Chevron said earlier this year it had managed to increase the design capacity at the Gorgon facility by 5 percent and the Wheatstone plant by 9 percent.
Chevron Australia has a 64.14 percent operating stake in Wheatstone. Other partners include KUFPEC (13.4 percent), Woodside (13 percent), and Kyushu Electric (1.46 percent), together with PE Wheatstone, partly owned by JERA (8 percent).