Australia: NW Shelf Gas Venture Halts Output on Electrical Fault

(Bloomberg) — Australia’s North West Shelf venture halted production due to an electrical fault, stopping output at the nation’s biggest liquefied natural gas project and cutting two-thirds of Western Australia’s gas supplies.

Gas production for customers in the state should resume late tomorrow, while LNG output will restart after that, Perth-based Woodside Petroleum Ltd., the venture operator, said today in a statement. The shutdown will result in power shortages tomorrow, said Western Power Corp., the grid operator.


The A$20 billion ($18 billion) North West Shelf venture runs four LNG production units with a capacity of 11.9 million metric tons a year and is the biggest supplier of gas into the Western Australian market. The stoppage halved deliveries through the state’s largest gas transmission line and put about a third of its biggest power producer’s plants out of operation.

“There’s never been an incident as significant as this,” said Mark Cooper, general manager commercial at Dampier Bunbury Pipeline, owner of the gas transmission line that takes fuel from the North West Shelf fields to customers in the southwest. “All process plants have issues from time to time for a few hours here and there. This is the first one that’s been this significant.”

Bloomberg