Chevron Australia and its joint venture participants have commemorated the Wheatstone project in Onslow, Western Australia, on December 1.
Chevron corporation chairman and CEO John Watson was joined at the Wheatstone plant site by Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan , other government dignitaries, joint venture partners, customers, community leaders, and Chevron management.
Speaking at the event exactly six years since the first ground-breaking at the Wheatstone plant site, Chevron Australia managing director Nigel Hearne congratulated the thousands of people who contributed to the safe delivery of the first liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargo .
“Thousands of people have worked together to safely deliver Wheatstone – both in Australia and across the globe. Wheatstone is a legacy asset that will be an important contributor to the Australian economy for the next 40 years, providing significant economic, social and community benefits.
[Wheatstone] will be an important contributor to the Australian economy for the next 40 years
“Wheatstone, along with the Gorgon project, forms part of a new generation of facilities positioning Australia as a leading and reliable supplier of affordable natural gas to the world.”
Wheatstone, which started production on October 9, 2017, is Australia’s first third-party natural gas hub enabling future development of the vast natural gas resources offshore Western Australia. At full capacity, the Wheatstone Project’s two train LNG facility is expected to contribute around six percent of the Asia Pacific region’s total future LNG production, delivering 8.9 million metric tonnes per year of LNG for export to customers in Asia.
The project’s domestic gas plant can produce 200 terajoules per day of domestic gas for the Western Australian market. When combined with domestic gas from the Chevron-operated Gorgon project, there is the capacity to produce 500 terajoules per day which is 50 percent of current domestic gas supply in Western Australia.
The Chevron-operated Wheatstone LNG facility is a joint venture between Australian subsidiaries of Chevron (64.14 percent), Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company (13.4 percent), Woodside Petroleum Ltd (13 percent), and Kyushu Electric Power Company (1.46 percent), together with PE Wheatstone Pty Ltd, part-owned by JERA (8 percent).
Chevron holds an 80.2 percent interest in the offshore licenses containing the Wheatstone and Iago fields.