Chevron ships first Wheatstone LNG cargo to Japan

Chevron’s Wheatstone liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project in Western Australia on Tuesday shipped its first ever cargo of the chilled fuel to Japan.

The cargo will be delivered to one of Chevron’s foundation buyers, LNG buying giant JERA.

As previously reported by LNG World News, the cargo is being carried onboard Chevron’s 160,000-cbm Asia Venture tanker. The tanker is one of six new LNG carriers recently added to Chevron’s operated fleet.

The multi-billion Wheatstone LNG project is Chevron’s second large LNG project fed from natural gas fields offshore the state of Western Australia.

The project is located 12 km west of Onslow, and processes natural gas from the Chevron-operated Wheatstone and Lago fields.

Worth mentioning, the construction on the Wheatstone project did not go smoothly as the LNG project experienced delays in module deliveries. These delays had resulted in an increase of Wheatstone project costs to $34 billion as compared to $29 billion in the original 2011 estimate.

According to Chevron, the Wheatstone project has since 2009 spent more than $20 billion on local goods and services through 300 different Australian companies and created more than 7,000 jobs during construction.

At full capacity, the 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 MTPA of LNG for export to customers in Asia, Chevron said.

The LNG project’s domestic gas plant also has the capacity to produce 200 terajoules per day of domestic gas for the Western Australian market.

Wheatstone LNG is a joint venture between Australian units of Chevron (64.14 percent), Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company (13.4 percent), Woodside (13 percent), and Kyushu Electric Power Company (1.46 percent), together with PE Wheatstone, part-owned by JERA (8 percent).

LNG World News Staff