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Chevron’s (NYSE:CVX) Wheatstone liquefied natural gas plant in Australia reported a production outage Thursday, as workers escalated strike action against two facilities that provide ~5% of global LNG supplies.
The company said it is working to resume full production at Wheatstone LNG “following a fault which has impacted about 25% of LNG production.”
It is not clear if the fault is related to the escalation in strikes at the Wheatstone and Gorgon LNG plants, where ~500 workers have been taking limited strike actions since last week in a labor dispute.
Faults and outages are not unusual at LNG plants, but strike actions could increase the time it takes to fix them, energy analysts say.
The workers’ union has said it plans to escalate industrial action starting Thursday to anything from a total strike to hours-long work stoppages.
Goldman Sachs has said any 24-hours a day strikes would raise supply risks, but the bank sees a low probability of a long outage that could fuel a lengthy spike in natural gas prices.
Chevron’s (CVX) requests for a regulator to intervene in the labor dispute will be heard September 22.
