Woodside sold the project to an insubstantial company to avoid a few hundred million in decommissioning costs: now it and its competitors will pay the price.
WA Premier Mark McGowan warned Alcoa to lift its game or face curtailed mining, but his successor Roger Cook slashed water supply protections after a possibly empty threat from the US miner.
WA Premier Mark McGowan warned Alcoa to lift its game or face curtailed mining, but his successor Roger Cook slashed water supply protections after a possibly empty threat from the US miner.
A letter from the US miner raised hope that the jarrah forest inland from Perth would escape its strip mining for bauxite, but Alcoa is keeping its options open.
"The government is allowing Alcoa to do whatever they friggin want," according to a long-term campaigner for better regulation of WA's alumina refineries.
Chief executive Bill Oplinger told Wall Street the miner had responded to all 60,000 comments on its WA expansion plans—in fact, it responded to fewer than 10, and some were unacceptable.
Alcoa chief executive Bill Oplinger told Wall Street the US aluminium specialist could take strong action to boost profits from alumina, most of which it refines in Western Australia.
If the US miner is found to have mined too close to a large jarrah tree, it would trigger an automatic cancellation of its right to mine much of its lease.
