Natural gas: the dreaded workers’ strike on Australian platforms begins
Workers at the Gorgon and Wheatstone liquefied natural gas projects off Australia are set to go on strike today after talks with the project operator, Chevron, fell through .
The talks have been going on for a couple of weeks and eventually progressed to mediation with the participation of the Australian Fair Work Commission.
The union alliance representing the workers, the Offshore Alliance, has repeatedly warned that Chevron will cost billions if it rejects the workers' demands, but that has apparently not helped. Eventually some executives preferred billions in losses to a few million more pay. Brilliant.
"Although the Offshore Alliance has given Chevron many opportunities to resolve (bargaining agreements)… ultimately they will face a day of reckoning," the union said today.
The disruption to the Gorgon and Wheatstone plants began at 5am GMT today and could last up to 11 hours a day. The industrial action is expected to continue until September 14th.
Reuters reported that as the strikes begin, the two LNG plants may need to be shut down, "if there are no competent staff to carry out handovers during work breaks," according to the OA.
The two projects together account for around 5% of global LNG supply. While Chevron failed to agree with the workers, the operator Woodside, which operates Australia's largest LNG plant, the North West Shelf, managed to agree and avert a strike.
The three LNG plants – North West Shelf, Gorgon and Wheatstone – account for a tenth of global LNG supply. The threat of a strike has significantly raised gas prices and put Europeans on high alert for the coming winter.
Australia, currently the world's largest exporter of LNG, does not export directly to Europe but, given its size, any supply disruption affects the global LNG market. Prices have picked up again this week, thanks to the Chevron news. As the industrial action kicks in, prices are likely to go higher again.
Thanks to our Telegram channel you can stay updated on the publication of new articles from Economic Scenarios.
The article Natural Gas: the dreaded workers' strike on Australian platforms begins comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/gas-naturale-inizia-il-temuto-sciopero-dei-lavoratori-sulle-piattaforme-australiane/ on Fri, 08 Sep 2023 09:00:17 +0000.