Gorgon at Seventy Percent Capacity

Chevron’s Gorgon gas project in Australia is back to 70 percent of its rated production capacity after a series of commissioning problems.

Full production is not now expected until well into 2017.

Production was stopped for two months soon after the project’s first gas exports as a result of a number of problems including a gas leak. Production recommenced in July. 

“At Gorgon we are currently producing at 70 percent of Train 1's capacity, or approximately 90,000 barrels per day,” the executive vice-president of upstream for Chevron Corp, Jay Johnson, told analysts on Friday. “We expect the first LNG from Train 2 early in the fourth quarter and from Train 3 in the second quarter of 2017.”

When completed the $53 billion project will be able to export 15 million tons of LNG annually from three processing plants.

The Gorgon Project is supplied from the Gorgon and Jansz-Io gas fields, located within the Greater Gorgon area, between 130 kilometers (80 miles) and 220 kilometers (136 miles) off the northwest coast of Western Australia. It includes a 15.6 MTPA LNG plant on Barrow Island, a carbon dioxide injection project and a domestic gas plant with the capacity to supply 300 terajoules of gas per day to Western Australia.

Gorgon is a joint venture of the Australian subsidiaries of operator Chevron with a 47.3 percent stake, ExxonMobil and Shell with 25 percent each, Osaka Gas at 1.25 percent, Tokyo Gas at one percent and Chubu Electric Power at less than 0.5 percent.

First LNG for another Australian gas project for Chevron, Wheatstone, is mid-2017 for Train 1 followed six to eight months later by Train 2.