Woodside Shuts Down Pluto LNG Plant Due to System Fault

Pluto LNG facility (Credit: Woodside Energy)

Australia's Woodside Energy shut down its Pluto LNG processing plant on Monday due to a fault in the facility's control system, a company spokesperson said on Tuesday.

The spokesperson had said in an earlier statement, also issued on Tuesday, that operations at the Karratha Gas Plant, connected to Pluto LNG by a pipeline, were normal and that the company's 2024 production guidance is unchanged.

"The unplanned event is under investigation. To maintain safety at the site, manual depressurisation of the train and offshore facilities was completed," said the spokesperson, referring to the facility's liquefied natural gas production train.

The company did not say whether operations had resumed or give any other details.

Woodside, Australia's biggest independent oil and gas company, last month narrowed its full-year production estimate to a range of 189 million to 195 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) from its prior forecast of 185 million to 195 million boe for the year.

Located in the Burrup Peninsula, the 4.9 million tons per annum capacity Pluto LNG has one existing liquefied natural gas train which processes gas from the offshore Pluto and Xena gas fields in Western Australia.

Woodside is building a second train at Pluto LNG to process gas from the Scarborough gas project.

Train 2 will have production capacity of 5 million metric tons per annum, while train 1 will process up to 3 million tons per annum of gas from Scarborough, once the field starts production.

(Reuters - Reporting by Emily Chow; Editing by Tom Hogue, Sonali Paul, Philippa Fletcher)