Australian gas operator, Santos, was, on November 29, 2022, forced to shut down a gas field offshore Western Australia after the company detected a gas leak on the subsea gas export pipeline. Santos reported on Tuesday that the leak was discovered during routine activities on John Brookes’s offshore gas platform, which is usually unmanned.

Following the leak discovery, the pipeline and platform were promptly shut down and depressurized. All the personnel was also demobilized. The export pipeline transports gas from the gas field to the onshore gas processing facilities at Varanus Island, where the gas is supplied and distributed to the domestic gas market.

The company also disclosed that it had notified all the regulatory authorities about the gas leak, and it is working with its customers to manage gas supply arrangements while the pipeline repair is ongoing. According to Santos, repair of the leaking pipeline would take four to six weeks to enable the pipeline to resume full-capacity production.

With a capacity of 390 terajoules per day, equivalent to 368 million cubic feet per day of gas, John Brookes is one of the key fields operated by Santos, supplying gas to the Varanus Island facility.

Although the gross output through Varanus Island was about 273 terajoules per day in 2021, the percentages of gas contributed by John Brookes remain unclear.

Santos recently disclosed that it was undertaking near-field operations to backfill. The operations are also known as providing new supplies to Varanus Island. This includes the Spartan field under execution, infill drilling at Spar, as well as the discovered resources at Spar Deep and Corvus.