{"id":567571,"date":"2026-03-27T10:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T10:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/567571\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T10:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T10:10:10","slug":"australias-biggest-lng-plants-offline-due-to-cyclone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/567571\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia’s biggest LNG plants offline due to cyclone"},"content":{"rendered":"

March 27, 2026 19:31 | News<\/a><\/p>\n

A powerful tropical cyclone in Western Australia has disrupted production at the \u200ccountry\u2019s two biggest liquefied natural gas plants run by Chevron and Woodside, exacerbating a global supply crunch caused by the conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Australia became the world\u2019s second-largest LNG exporter after \u200cQatar shut down production in March following damage to its facilities from Iranian strikes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Global LNG flows out of the Middle East have also been upended by Iran\u2019s blockage of the Strait \u200cof Hormuz.<\/p>\n

Chevron said it was working to restore production at its Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG facilities in Western Australia following outages that were likely due to Tropical Cyclone Narelle, a category three storm, which crossed the coast on Friday.<\/p>\n

\"Woodside'sCyclone Narelle disrupted production at Woodside\u2019s Karratha gas plant. (Rebecca Le May\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n

Gorgon is Australia\u2019s largest LNG export facility, producing 15.6 million tonnes a year with three processing trains, while the smaller Wheatstone consists of two trains producing 8.9 million tonnes.<\/p>\n

Woodside also said production at its Karratha gas plant had been disrupted by the cyclone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The gas plant is the onshore processing facility for the North \u200cWest Shelf, Australia\u2019s \u200coldest and second-largest LNG project, producing \u206014.3 million tonnes a year, down from 16.9 million tonnes a year after it shut down one of its \u200bfive production trains.<\/p>\n

MST Marquee analyst Saul Kavonic estimated the cyclone was disrupting more than 30 million tonnes a year of Australian LNG supply.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Combined with the shock from the Middle East, he said more than a quarter of global LNG supply was affected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will exacerbate gas market tightness in Asia and Europe, especially if it takes more than a matter of days to normalise Australian production levels again,\u201d Kavonic said.<\/p>\n

A Chevron Australia spokesperson said an outage occurred at the Wheatstone platform, about 225km off Australia\u2019s west coast, on \u2060Thursday, causing a suspension of onshore gas production.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll personnel were demobilised from \u200cthe Wheatstone Platform ahead \u200bof the cyclone passing, which has been operated remotely from our Perth office since Tuesday afternoon,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Three hours later, an outage shut down one of three LNG production \u200btrains at the \u200cGorgon facility on Barrow Island, about 50km offshore.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will resume full production at both facilities once it is safe to do so,\u201d a Chevron Australia spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Woodside \u200bsaid production at the North West Shelf project would restart once it is able to send workers back to its offshore facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It said operations were continuing at its Macedon domestic gas plant and its Pluto LNG facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is any material impact to production or assets, Woodside will update the market,\u201d a \u200bspokesperson \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n

\"AAP<\/a><\/p>\n

Australian Associated Press is the beating heart of Australian news. AAP is Australia\u2019s only independent national newswire and has been delivering accurate, reliable and fast news content to the media industry, government and corporate sector for 85 years. We keep Australia informed.<\/p>\n

Latest stories from our writers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 27, 2026 19:31 | News A powerful tropical cyclone in Western Australia has disrupted production at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-567571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}