Chevron has confirmed that Train 3 repairs at its Gorgon facility in Western Australia are expected to start in the second quarter.
At a company investor day, Chevron executive vice president for upstream Jay Johnson said the company had successfully completed repairs to the heat exchangers on both Train 1 and Train 2.
“And now in the second quarter we’ve really got three issues or three tasks ahead of us. The first is to do the inspections and if there’s any repairs required on Train 3,” Johnson said.
“We also have to take the scheduled turnaround that was planned for Train 3 which will also occur in the second quarter.”
In July last year, the company outlined in a statement that it had been conducting planned maintenance at the Gorgon facility from May 23, with scheduled work mechanically complete.
Following a routine inspection of the Gorgon LNG Train 2, Chevron confirmed that propane heat exchangers identified weld quality issues.
Chevron further outlined in September that it received a revised remediation notice from the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DMIRS) for the inspection of propane exchangers on Gorgon LNG Trains 1 and 3.
In November last year, the company reported that it had recommenced production from Train 2 following the discovery of a weld quality issues in propane heat exchangers on Train 2 during scheduled maintenance in July.
Chevron begin repairs to propane heat exchangers on Gorgon LNG Train 1 in January. Johnson added that the reliability of Gorgon has been steadily increasing.
“These defects that we’re having to address on the first two trains, Trains 1 and 2, the investigation is still underway but the initial indications are that these are manufacturing defects that were there from the beginning of manufacture, not an operational issue,” he said.
“And so overall we’ve actually be quite pleased with the advancing reliability of the Gorgon facilities and the ability of them to run at their capacity.”
Chevron has also increased the capacity by 5 per cent, with Johnson saying he is looking forward to getting through the second quarter and establishing a good run of production in the second half of this year.