Alcoa reverts to gas for fuelling alumina refineries in Western Australia (updated)

Alumina

12/01/2023 24:28

(Adds details, background)
       Jan 12 (Reuters) - Alcoa Corp  AA.N  said on Thursday it
reverted to using gas to fuel boilers at its partially owned
Kwinana and Pinjarra alumina refineries in Western Australia, a
week after the aluminium producer had resorted to using diesel
due to gas shortage. 
    Gas supply shortage in Western Australia has forced Alcoa to
flag a 30% cut in its production from its Kwinana refinery,
which it jointly owns with Alumina Ltd  AWC.AX .
    "Kwinana refinery continues to operate with one production
unit offline and reduced process flows," Alcoa said. However,
Alcoa did not set out a timeline on when it will resume full
production.
     Chevron Corp  CVX.N  on Wednesday re-commenced gas supply
from Wheatstone domestic gas plant to the Western Australia
market after an equipment failure knocked off the energy firm's
215 terajoules-a-day Wheatstone plant on Jan. 5.
        The Wheatstone outage came on top of a supply loss from
Santos Ltd's  STO.AX  Varanus Island operation, which has been
shut since late-November due to a leak on a gas pipeline from an
offshore platform.
        Despite increased gas supply into the Western Australian
domestic gas market, Santos continued to experience production
constraints at two gas facilities, Alcoa said. 
 (Reporting by Tejaswi Marthi in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi
Aich and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
 ((Tejaswi.Marthi@thomsonreuters.com;))