Woodside Energy, Chevron To Hold Talks With Unions To Avert Strikes

Chevron and Woodside Energy are holding talks with unions to avert strike action at its LNG facilities that equates to around 10-11% of global supplies according to the firms and analyst notes.

• The Offshore Alliance union said bargaining meetings for improved pay will continue on Thursday and next Tuesday before it takes a final decision on a strike at the Woodside facilities.
• Chevron said it was reviewing the applications from the union to Australia's independent Fair Work Commission over planned strikes at its Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG plants.
• Collectively, monthly exports from the facilities equate to around 11% of exports globally, according to analysts at RBC.
• Australia’s share of global LNG supply accounted for around 20% last month. July LNG exports out of Australia stood at 9.3bcm/month, JP Morgan said in a note.
• The bank also estimates the maximum impact from these potential outages could be as high as 4.49bcm/month – Northwest Shelf, Gorgon, Wheatstone - equal to 9.8% of global supply.
• Japanese and South Korean firms are the biggest buyers of LNG from the North West Shelf project, which has an export capacity of 16.9mn t/r. LNG exports from Chevron’s Gorgon facility, capacity of 15.6mn t/yr and the Wheatstone facility, 8.9mn t/yr, are mostly going to Japan.
• "The loss of contracted volumes from Australia would likely see countries like China looking into the spot market for replacement cargoes, pushing up not only JKM prices but also European gas prices in another potential price war, as we have seen today," RBC said.