Australia: GE Bags Gorgon LNG Work

GE said it has signed a more than US$600 million, 22-year contractual services agreement (CSA) with Chevron Australia Pty LTD to maintain the compression trains, power generation and associated equipment that will be at the heart of the Chevron-operated Gorgon Project off the northwestern coast of Australia.

Under the agreement, GE Oil & Gas’ Global Services division will provide Chevron Australia with scheduled maintenance, access to expertise through resident engineers, monitoring and diagnostics of the installed equipment coupled with engineering analytics, plus a reliability guarantee relating to continuity of production. As part of this collaboration, GE also will manage planned maintenance inventory as well as supply initial spare parts. GE’s first contract performance manager is scheduled to begin working in Perth in October 2012.

“Companies around the world continue to express confidence in our services expertise, which enables them to operate as efficiently as possible over the long term,” said Dan Heintzelman, president and CEO of GE Oil & Gas.

The new CSA ensures the continued participation of Australian companies and the ongoing creation of economic growth opportunities for local communities in Western Australia. The new GE service and maintenance centre in Jandakot, Perth, is expected to deliver 4,000 training days in 2013 for GE staff and employees of its customers.

About the Gorgon Project

Gorgon is one of the world’s largest natural gas projects and the largest single resource natural gas project in Australia’s history. The Gorgon Project will develop the Gorgon and Jansz/Io gas fields, located within the Greater Gorgon area, about 130 kilometres off the north-west coast of Western Australia. It includes the construction of a 15 million tonne per annum (MTPA) liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant on Barrow Island and a domestic gas plant with the capacity to provide 300 terajoules per day to supply gas to Western Australia. More information can be found on the Chevron Australia website.

The Gorgon Project is operated by Chevron and is a joint venture of the Australian subsidiaries of Chevron (47.3 percent), ExxonMobil (25 percent), Shell (25 percent), Osaka Gas (1.25 percent), Tokyo Gas (1 percent) and Chubu Electric Power (0.417 percent).

The overall GE supply for the Gorgon projects includes:

• Five 130-megawatt Frame-9 gas turbines in a modularised solution to meet the power generation needs of Barrow Island’s gas treatment and liquefaction facilities.
• Three main refrigerant compression trains driven by six Frame-7 gas turbines required for Gorgon’s production of 15 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) LNG.
• Six electric-motor driven compression trains to power Gorgon’s pioneering carbon dioxide sequestration (C02) project, one of the world’s largest, injecting up to four times more CO2 than any other project worldwide.
• 20 subsea trees—7” VetcoGray subsea trees with retrievable choke modules to control and manage the production of gas from subsea wells.
• 20 VetcoGray subsea wellhead systems.
• Production controls systems—used to monitor and control the complete subsea infrastructure, controlled remotely from Barrow Island.
• The supply of five pipeline termination systems, five manifolds, 34 pipeline end terminations and several other structures, including pig launchers/receivers and umbilical distribution assemblies, 45 spools and 18 multi-bore well jumpers.

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LNG World News Staff, July 20, 2012; Image: Chevron