WA Premier Roger Cook's core "Made in WA" election policy will be tested by his use of local content provisions to keep Chevron's WA engineers working in WA.
A budget for a gas-led recovery is delaying inevitable and necessary change. Eventually, Australia will be forced to catch up to the EU, China and a post-Trump USA.
The Northern Endeavor mess started with Woodside paying to rid itself of a rusty ageing asset, ended with a $362 million liability for the Government and in between was a regulatory shambles.
Chevron's slice of the North West Shelf LNG project is touted as ideal for infrastructure investors. It is the opposite - highly risky, complex and dysfunctional.
Cost, climate concerns and delay have killed Woodside's Browse LNG project and now it must negotiate with its old foes, the North West Shelf partners, to ensure Scarborough is developed.
No deal with Alcoa has cost Adelaide Brighton 31% of its value and threatened its WA lime business that is warring with its neighbours in suburban Perth.
Building a gas pipeline from WA to the east to help the the economy recover from COVID-19 is such an extraordinarily bad idea the judgement of Nev Power and others pushing it has to be questioned.
If Scarborough, considered the most economic of Woodside's two projects, was uncompetitive before LNG prices crashed then plans will have to change on the Burrup Peninsula.
Woodside is struggling to portray itself as both green and gassy with mixed messages about carbon emissions, the threat from renewables and why all the way with LNG is a sound long term strategy.
The credibility of estimates from US giant Chevron of the tax it will pay for its LNG production has been undermined by questions from the Senate committee on corporate tax avoidance.
