Industrial Action at Chevron’s LNG Facilities in Australia Started

Workers at Chevron’s Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG export terminals in Australia began partial strikes Friday 1PM AWST (06:00BST) after talks failed to reach an agreement in a dispute on pay and conditions, the unions said.

• Friday’s partial strikes include work stoppage and bans on carrying out overtime and some other duties.
• Unions have notified Chevron that action from Friday could include work stoppages in one-hour blocks for periods of between 3 hours to 11 hours each day. A refusal to carry out: overcycle work or performing duties during a period that would otherwise be time off; unpaid overtime by some workers; a transfer to another work site; assignments at a higher function level; night shifts or call out duties by some staff; participation in some training and instruction programs; some work on days designated for travel.
• Industrial action could intensify by 14 September which would then effectively halt LNG exports, with workers stopping work completely for two weeks.
• Chevron’s “bargaining performance has been the most inept effort of any employer the union has dealt with in the past five years and our members have had enough,” Offshore Alliance said in a social media post.
• Both facilities accounted for 7% of global LNG supply in 2022. In July this year, the plants shipped LNG equal to 6.6% of global supplies.
• The impact on LNG shipments is not likely to be immediate and gas consumption is currently muted in both Europe and Asia. However, greater risk to supply persists if strikes continue into peak demand season, the northern hemisphere’s winter.
• Friday’s initial strikes “appear lower level, designed to create costs and inefficiencies for Chevron, but not yet impact production materially,” Saul Kavonic, energy analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG, said.