DARWIN — Four-hundred workers at the Wickham Point Natural Gas Plant walked off the job on February 10 over concerns that emergency sirens were not loud enough to be heard above the din of machinery.

The workers, members of the Australian Workers Union, said that the warning system was insufficient and demanded that emergency lights also be installed. The giant San Francisco-based Bechtel engineering company, which constructed and maintains the new liquified natural gas plant, hurriedly installed a new emergency system on February 11-12.

Part of a $1.5 billion scheme to pipe natural gas from the Timor Sea, then load it in liquified form onto tankers for export to Japan, the LNG plant has experienced ongoing operational problems that have delayed the gas processing, causing one tanker to leave empty in early January and delaying another for a fortnight earlier this month.

Jon Lamb

From Green Left Weekly, February 22, 2006.
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