Outage in Australia Adds to Global LNG Crunch | OilPrice.com
The temporary shutdown of the Santos-operated Barossa and Darwin LNG plants in Australia is compounding an already severe global LNG supply crunch caused by war and major infrastructure damage in the Middle East.
Australian oil and gas producer Santos was forced on Tuesday to shut down its newly-commissioned Barossa LNG plant, temporarily shutting the Darwin LNG export plant just as the global gas markets scramble for supply with the Middle East’s LNG out of the picture.
Darwin LNG is now under “temporary shutdown”, necessary to replace equipment on the offshore production vessel at the Barossa project which feeds the export plant, a spokeswoman for Santos told the Australian Financial Review.
It was not immediately clear when production at Barossa and exports from Darwin could resume, according to AFR.
The outage occurs two months after the first LNG cargo from Barossa LNG was loaded on a vessel to Japan. This shipment marked the commercial start-up of the Barossa LNG project, which is operated by Santos and is designed to backfill the Darwin LNG plant as legacy gas supplies decline.
The outage in Australia adds to already strained global supply of LNG, which has been choked by the war in the Middle East.











