Chevron restarts production at Wheatstone gas plant

(Reuters) -Chevron Corp's Wheatstone domestic gas plant has re-commenced supply to the Western Australia market, a spokesperson for the oil and gas explorer's Australian unit said on Wednesday.

Gas supply to Western Australia had been cut due to an equipment failure that knocked out Chevron's 215 terajoules-a-day Wheatstone plant on Jan. 5.

"Domestic gas production from the plant is expected to steadily increase before reaching full production rates in coming days," the spokesperson added.

Earlier this week, aluminium producer Alcoa Corp had flagged 30% production cuts at its partially owned Kwinana alumina refinery in Western Australia, due to a shortage of gas supply.

The Wheatstone outage came on top of a loss of supply from Santos Ltd's Varanus Island operation, which has been shut since late November due to a leak on a gas pipeline from an offshore platform.

(Reporting by Rishav Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee)