Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Chevron Corp. and its partners in Australia’s Gorgon natural gas project have awarded almost A$10 billion ($9.2 billion) in contracts, with a General Electric Co. unit and Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. the latest winners.

GE Oil & Gas said today its A$433 million contract is partly for technology that will allow the storage of carbon dioxide at Gorgon’s Barrow Island site. Hyundai Heavy won a A$2.23 billion order to build processing facilities for the gas venture off Australia’s northwest coast, it said yesterday.

That brings the total value of the contracts to about A$9.57 billion, according to figures supplied by San Ramon, California-based Chevron today. A KBR Inc.-led joint venture, Leighton Holdings Ltd., Royal Boskalis Westminster NV and CB&I Constructors Ltd. are among those to secure work, Chevron said.

“It’s a significant project, no doubt about it,” David Saxelby, managing director of Thiess, said by phone today. Thiess, part of Sydney-based Leighton Holdings, won a A$500 million contract to build temporary facilities on Barrow Island. It’s also a member of a joint venture that received a further A$500 million of work. Gorgon is “important to our business and to Western Australia,” Saxelby said.

Chevron’s liquefied natural gas venture with Irving, Texas- based Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, based in The Hague, may generate A$300 billion in sales to China, India, Japan and South Korea over the first 20 years, according to government estimates.

Exports in 2014

Gorgon is the largest of at least a dozen projects in the region seeking to tap rising gas demand in Asia, and is due to start LNG exports in 2014.

Roy Krzywosinski, Chevron’s managing director for Australia, said Sept. 14 that Gorgon was set to award A$10 billion in contracts in the coming months. The three partners have estimated that the venture would create 10,000 jobs at peak construction.

Ulsan, South Korea-based Hyundai Heavy, the world’s largest shipyard, is expanding into LNG facilities as energy companies increase exploration. The company said it will build 48 fabricating modules on Barrow Island.

GE Oil & Gas, which makes turbines that drive compressors, power plants and other machinery for the oil and natural-gas industries, said it will supply equipment allowing the project to produce 15 million metric tons of LNG a year and store carbon dioxide.

Chevron and its partners will extract carbon dioxide during the liquefaction process at Barrow Island and inject it into porous rock more than 2,000 meters (6,600 feet) below the processing plant. This will cut project emissions by 40 percent, the companies say. It is the world’s biggest effort to store greenhouse gases.

The A$2.7 billion engineering and construction assignment for Houston-based KBR’s Kellogg Joint Venture Group is the biggest award so far. Australian engineering company Clough Ltd. won a 20 percent share of that contract.

To contact the reporter on this story: James Paton in Sydney jpaton4@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 22, 2009 03:40 EDT