No profit, falling production, inadequate maintenance, a safety plan in limbo and a big clean-up if exploration fails: challenges aplenty at the Canadian company's only offshore facility.
No profit, falling production, inadequate maintenance, a safety plan in limbo and a big clean-up if exploration fails: challenges aplenty at the Canadian company's only offshore facility.
US oil and gas supermajor Chevron is the major LNG producer in WA with its Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG projects and a share in the North West Shelf project.
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A $6B high-tech subsea compression system will keep Chevron's Gorgon LNG plant supplied with gas but little of the massive spend will occur in Australia.
Chevron's Gorgon should be a showpiece of carbon capture and storage but five years after first LNG it is still not working properly and has another five-month extension from the regulator.
Shell, Exxon and Chevron are big players in Australian oil and gas and being forced to decarbonise sooner will affect their local operations, with a possible king hit to Prelude.
Maintenance contractor UGL has used a clause designed to ensure safety during a strike at Chevron's Gorgon LNG to portray the industrial action as illegal.
Safety regulator WorkSafe does not know when it will receive test results so four workers on Chevron's Gorgon LNG plant will know if they have received an unsafe exposure to toxic mercury.
Chevron's Wheatstone LNG is in the firing line of a new approach from the WA Environmental Protection Authority that forced big emissions cuts from the Waitsia gas project.
WA's industrial greenhouse gas emissions are dominated by four products and a handful of companies, including a few that have managed to keep a low profile in the climate wars.
Most big WA carbon polluters including Chevron, Adbri, South32 and Woodside are wanting on emissions reduction targets, strategy and cash, according to benchmarking for the world's biggest investors.
Singapore's Pavilion Energy will buy Australian LNG from Chevron with certified greenhouse emissions, in another sign that Asian buyers are favouring less carbon-intensive gas.
Gorgon LNG's carbon emissions will jump by more than one million tonnes a year until Chevron fixes an underground pressure management problem that caused WA's safety regulator to curtail CO2 injection by two-thirds.
Technical problems at Gorgon and Wheatstone will give Chevron Australia another year of reduced LNG production while US headquarters remains hesitant about the energy transition.
The WA safety regulator has told Chevron to turn down Australia's $3.1 billion showpiece Gorgon LNG carbon capture and storage system until problems are fixed, meaning carbon emissions will rise.
