Gas Flowing at Third Gorgon Train
Tuesday 28 March 2017
US giant Chevron has started production from the third and final train at its Gorgon liquefied natural gas project in Western Australia.
Chevron announced the milestone on Tuesday which now sees the nameplate capacity for the LNG export project on Barrow Island increase to 15.6 million tonnes per annum.
“This is a key milestone for the Gorgon joint venture participants, our workforce, customers, government and all those associated with the project over its lifetime should be extremely proud,” Chevron Australia managing director Nigel Hearne said.
“We are committed to being a safe and reliable supplier and look forward to supplying cleaner burning natural gas for decades to come.”
The start-up of Train 3 comes a day after news output at Train 2 had been suspended for planned maintenance work.
Chevron has approvals in place to build a fourth train at Barrow Island, however Hearne said earlier this month it was unlikely the additional train would be added any time in the near future.
Instead the company has previously said it plans to increase capacity at Gorgon and its yet to start Wheatstone project in Western Australia by increasing reliability followed by debottlenecking and re-rating of the process trains.
Production from Gorgon Train 3 comes just over a year after Chevron started production from the first train at the project.
The LNG plant is supplied by gas from Gorgon and Jansz-Io gas fields, which lie about 65 and 130 kilometres off the coast, respectively.
The Gorgon project also includes a domestic gas plant with the capacity to supply 300 terajoules of gas per day to Western Australia.