The Western Australian government said it has deployed measures to mitigate gas and electricity supply issues following an outage at Chevron’s Wheatstone domestic gas plant near Onslow.
The Wheatstone gas plant experienced a technical failure on the evening of January 5, which resulted in the halt of gas production.
In a media release issued Sunday, the McGowan government explained that there is no risk to household gas or electricity supply despite the number of commercial production facilities being offline or experiencing output backlogs.
“Household gas usage represents a very small percentage of total gas use in Western Australia at 7 per cent,” said Energy Minister Bill Johnston. “While industry may pay market prices in the short term to secure gas, commercial operators are responding appropriately.”
The plant was slated to go back online on Sunday but this has been postponed by at least two days due to technical problems encountered by the operator.
“The domestic gas reservation policy, which guarantees 15 per cent of supply is retained for local use, continues to be the backbone of our energy security here in WA,” Johnston said.
Gas suppliers and marketers are actively seeking to meet gas demand from industry.
The Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline remains in a stable state.
