Petroleum industry in Western Australia
Based largely on development of the reserves of the North West Shelf and onshore hydrocarbon basins, the industry extracts crude oil, condensate and natural gas from petroleum reservoirs deep beneath the Earth's surface.
[1] A large plant located at Withnell Bay near Dampier, produces liquefied natural gas (LNG) for export to Asian customers.
[9] Petroleum in Western Australia is mostly sourced from the Carnarvon Basin, which stretches for 1,000 km of the west and northwest coast, from Geraldton to north of Port Hedland.
[9] The North West Shelf Venture (NWSV), a consortium of six energy companies led by Woodside, operates five LNG trains near Karratha.
The majority of LNG produced by the NWSV is exported to Japan, with occasional spot sales to the United States, Spain and Korea.
Chevron (along with joint venture partners Shell and ExxonMobil) is considering development of the Greater Gorgon gas fields, which contain recoverable reserves of 40 trillion cubic feet (1,100 km3).
The project entails constructing subsea pipelines from the Gorgon and Jansz fields to Australia's Barrow Island, where 3 liquefaction trains will produce 15 million tons of LNG per year.
[17] There are three main 'supply lines' for WA's domestic gas: Oil production in Australia increased gradually after 1980, peaking in 2000 at 805,000 barrels per day (128,000 m3/d).
[18] Australian crude oil and condensate production is projected to increase in the medium term (mainly due to new supply sources in Western Australia) before declining gradually.
Foreign-owned companies involved in the state include Apache Energy, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, Inpex and ConocoPhillips.
[19] Onshore, and out to 3 nm (nautical miles) from the territorial sea baseline (coastal waters), petroleum operations are the responsibility of the state government.
WA's largest production platforms are North Rankin A and Goodwyn A - both operated by Woodside Energy - located approximately 130 km west of Dampier, where the ocean depth is about 100 m.[9] There are currently four major natural gas transmission pipelines supplying the Western Australian gas market:[30] Refining refers to the transformation of crude oil and condensate into end-use petroleum products.
For many years, a small amount of crude oil has arrived for processing at the refinery via road tanker, having been produced at onshore wells near Dongara since the late 1960s.
This occurred on a day when the temperature was expected to reach nearly 42 °C and the company was unable to use its 'peakload' gas-fired power stations because of maintenance being carried out on the main pipeline from the north-west.
[32] On 2 January 2008, an electrical fault resulted in a production shutdown at the North West Shelf Venture's Karratha Gas Plant.
[33] The most serious and significant disruption occurred in June 2008, when a pipeline rupture and explosion at the Varanus Island facility caused a 3-month shutdown of the plant, reducing the state's supply of natural gas by one-third.
[35] This policy replicated the initial State Agreement for the North West Shelf Project, and was based on a perceived decline in the availability of gas from non-export developments.
[36] Australia's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol treaty in March 2008 is likely to increase the country's use of natural gas to displace more carbon-dioxide-intensive coal.
Among the measures proposed was an emissions trading scheme "which will make higher-emissions forms of energy generation more expensive, shifting demand towards lower-emissions sources, and towards technologies that capture and sequester emissions...and in transport, an emissions trading scheme will make higher-emissions forms of transport more expensive, shifting demand to lower-emissions forms"[38] The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has identified petroleum facilities in Western Australia, including offshore platforms, ports, processing plants and pipelines, as potential targets of military or terrorist attack.
