Santos is battling blocked heat exchangers, failed subsea valves, and faulty safety doors 285km north of Darwin so it can reap the reward of high gas prices in Asia.
I worked in oil & gas in commercial and engineering roles for 20 years. Since 2016, I have written for The West Australian, WAtoday, The Guardian and Boiling Cold, winning five WA Media Awards.
WA will be home to two of the largest green hydrogen electrolysers in the world to feed an ammonia plant and inject the clean fuel into the South West gas grid.
If South32’s low profile coal-burning Worsley Alumina operated like Alcoa’s facilities 1.5 million tonnes of carbon emissions a year would be avoided: the same as Alcoa's Wagerup refinery.
Shell's production of millions of tonnes of carbon emissions by burning excess gas at Prelude LNG 400km off the WA coast will no longer go unnoticed, with satellites now tracking flaring across the globe.
Inpex pledged in January 2021 to cut its emissions 30 per cent this decade while it was planning to boost CO2 from Ichthys LNG, which accounts for three quarters of its carbon footprint, by 30 per cent.
Chevron's Wheatstone LNG is in the firing line of a new approach from the WA Environmental Protection Authority that forced big emissions cuts from the Waitsia gas project.
Regulator NOPSEMA has wrested control of the schedule for cleaning up Australia's offshore oil and gas fields from tight-fisted operators in a move that may result in an offshore jobs boom later this decade.
For Woodside, it is Scarborough or bust. Incredibly the LNG specialist has no plan B ready if its last chance to develop an LNG project evaporates. And Scarborough is no sure thing.
WA's competition regulator has accepted that competition from renewable energy will shrink the economic life of the Dampier to Bunbury gas pipeline by more than three decades.
