THE state government has highlighted a $60 million floating dock at Henderson as the sort of investment needed to give local companies a better shot at winning lucrative resources fabrication contracts.
The dock’s launch this week coincided with fresh attacks on gas giant Chevron for passing over local steel fabricators to award $300 million worth of contracts for Gorgon LNG plant components to foreign companies.
More than 70 per cent of the new self-propelled floating dock at Henderson’s Australian Marine Complex was built in WA. The dock can lift vessels weighing up to 12,000 tonnes and enable the water-to-land transfer of vessels weighing up to 3,500t.
The AMC complex can now bank on $2 billion worth of naval maintenance contracts over the next 25 years, most notably to service Australia’s Collins-class submarines. The dock also has the capacity to undertake $100 million in resources-related work each year.
Lands Minister Brendon Grylls said it was an example of ensuring WA had “the right sort of infrastructure” to give local firms the best chance of participating in major developments such as Gorgon.
But local companies still had to be competitive to win such work, he said.
“We expect the world to look at Australian gas and see that as competitive and wish to buy it. We have to be exactly the same in the procurement of those projects to ensure Australian companies get those jobs,” he said.
The Australian Steel Institute claims the Gorgon tender process was deliberately skewed in favour of Asian fabricators by requiring the use of Japanese industry standard steel.
But Chevron said the Japanese steel standard had no bearing on the tender outcome, as local fabricators would have been provided with the right steel for free, adding that Australian industry had already won $7 billion in Gorgon work.
However, it declined to comment on how much Gorgon work would be awarded to its part-owned CUEL fabrication business at Thailand’s massive Laem Chabang shipyard.
Meanwhile, Woodside chief executive Don Voelte said his company “would not do anything to minimise Australian content” at its proposed $30 billion Browse LNG project.
Though no Australian yard had the capacity to build the main plant modules, he hoped Australian fabricators would win the lion’s share of contracts for smaller items such as accommodation units.
