Waitsia gained a controversial exemption from the ban on exports of onshore gas.
Beach chief executive Brett Woods, who has led Beach for three months,said it was extremely disappointing to be continually encountering quality issues at this late stage of the Perth Basin project in which the company had a 50 per cent stake.
“Having to redirect existing onsite labour to remedial works is slowing the progress of pre-commissioning activities,resulting in further delay and cost increases,” he said.
The current problems were preceded by the need to rebuild compressors and replace valves and piping after prestart-up quality checks revealed problems.
RBC Capital Markets analyst Gordon Ramsay said close to 50 per cent of the project workforce were fixing problems rather than focusing on starting up the plant.
Ramsay said Beach would also incur costs of more than $40 million from processing capacity it had booked to Woodside’s North West Shelf gas export plant.
The company is trying to arrange a gas swap with other WA producers to use that capacity and repay the gas when Waitsia is operating.