A union group applied to Australia's labour tribunal on Thursday for permission to strike at Woodside Energy's Pluto 2 project before the end of the year, in a battle over pay at the under-construction facility.
A strike by construction workers could slow work to expand Woodside's Pluto LNG plant in Western Australia and delay the company's plan to ship the first liquefied natural gas cargo from Pluto 2 in the second half of 2026.
The Offshore Alliance, a group of the notorious Maritime Union of Australia and the Australian Workers Union, said salary negotiations with Bechtel had gone nowhere and its next move was to strike.
Bechtel is the contractor building Pluto, which is an expansion of an existing facility in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
Woodside and Bechtel did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
In an update in October, Woodside said the second processing unit, or Train 2, with a capacity of five million tonnes per year of LNG, was 91 per cent complete and on track to send its first cargo in the second half of next year.
Workers at Pluto 2 are currently receiving an hourly rate that is 30 per cent less than workers doing the same job at the Wheatstone project, when factoring in changes in the consumer price index, the Offshore Alliance claimed in a statement.
Wheatstone LNG is a separate project operated by Chevron. The union group wants a 30 per cent rise in pay.
The country's labour tribunal, the Fair Work Commission, must approve the action and then the union members will vote before a strike occurs. Workers could down tools before the end of the year.
Offshore Alliance said it expected “the overwhelming majority” of the 1,800 workers will choose to take protected industrial action.
Bechtel’s earlier five per cent pay rise offer to workers in November was rejected by 83 per cent of workers.
(Reporting by Helen Clark in Perth; Editing by Alasdair Pal and Christian Schmollinger)