I worked in oil & gas in commercial and engineering roles for 20 years. Since 2016, I have written for The West Australian, WAtoday and Boiling Cold, winning five WA Media Awards.
Woodside has dropped plans for a 12-week work roster blasted by unions as "catastrophically unsafe" and will move to a temporary roster of two weeks of isolation, four weeks work and two weeks at home to manage COVID-19 risk.
Offshore unions have welcomed a deal with Inpex that adds two-weeks of isolation to the roster and gives half-pay to stood-down workers but slammed what they say is a Woodside proposal to work offshore for 12 weeks straight.
Woodside has told investors it can afford to bury CO2 from its Browse LNG project just months after telling regulators it was a "high-risk, high-cost" option.
Woodside had planned for 2020 and 2021 to be years of growth but now the Scarborough and Browse LNG projects are deferred and $US20.4 billion slashed from this years' budget as it joins its peers in survival mode.
Shell's Prelude floating LNG, already besieged with safety and reliability issues, has produced 2.3 million tonnes of greenhouse gases for one cargo of LNG.
WA LNG producers Woodside and Chevron, beset by low prices and COVID-19 work restrictions, are maintaining dividends to shareholders and gas to customers as they shed workers, with unions describing Woodside’s actions as “brutal, cold, and unnecessary.”
The iron ore price that had held up in the economic chaos of 2020 is beginning to fall, and the worst case of $US50 a tonne would shatter government revenue just when it is needed the most.
Delay to Woodside's big growth bet on the "Burrup Hub" Scarborough and Browse LNG projects looks more likely with Woodside warned not to overspend as its partners trim their budgets.
