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.
Strike Energy's Stuart Nicholls regards the WA gas market as a dangerous place to be as new cheap supply comes in as the big resource players prepare to move away from fossil fuels.
Santos and ENI are looking for solutions for CO2 and removing old facilities in the waters north of Darwin. Time will tell if the problems are solved or just delayed.
There are rapidly escalating risks in global warming between 1.5℃ and 2℃ and the focus now must be on governments’ 2030 targets for emissions reduction.
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.
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.
Cheaper solar power making green hydrogen production competitive in many countries by 2030 in a boon for use in Australia but a hurdle for dreams of a huge export market.
WA's industrial greenhouse gas emissions are dominated by four products and a handful of companies, including a few that have managed to keep a low profile in the climate wars.
Global warming can be limited to 1.5°C with commitments now to significant emissions reductions this decade, and in a circular logic, those commitments need faith that climate change can be tamed.
Emissions are on track to near 3℃ warming by 2100 that would give future Australians a seriously degraded life, according to the Australian Academy of Science, but strong action this decade can produce a better future.
