Chevron’s Wheatstone back online

Chevron has restored its Wheatstone gas facility to full production after a fault limited its output for four days in the midst of an ongoing battle with Offshore Alliance.

The company has confirmed Wheatstone was back online late on Sunday, with some impact on LNG deliveries.

“Chevron Australia confirms full production resumed last night at the Wheatstone gas facility following a fault on September 14,” a Chevron Australia spokesperson said.

“During this time LNG continued to be produced at approximately 80 per cent of usual rates, and vessel loading continued.

“There has been no change to scheduled LNG deliveries.”

The spokesperson confirmed domestic gas facilities and supply at Wheatstone were unaffected by the outage.

The company recently announced a slight increase to the amount of domestic gas supplied to the local market via the Wheatstone facility.

The outage at Wheatstone comes amid a tumultuous time for the project, where industrial action was escalated last week by Offshore Alliance as part of an ongoing battle over an enterprise agreement.

Industrial action has been ongoing at the Wheatstone and Gorgon facilities since September 8, with an escalation to full strikes taking place from Thursday last week – the same day as the Wheatstone outage started.

The two parties are expected to return to mediation this week, ahead of a Fair Work Commission hearing on Friday initiated after Chevron applied to the industrial umpire to declare intractable bargaining over the action.