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.
Woodside chief executive Peter Coleman told investors his Browse and Scarborough LNG projects stood up with a $US40/t carbon price, but the fine print was a different story.
Emissions-heavy corporate Western Australia wants the WA Environmental Protection Authority to leave control of greenhouse gases to the Federal Government.
WA is the only state in Australia with rising emissions on the back of new LNG projects that will make meeting Paris Agreement emissions reductions very dificult.
Big businesses in WA are allowed to spew into the air more than 64 million tonnes of greenhouse gases — almost 18 per cent of Australia’s self-imposed limit.
Chevron's Wheatstone LNG project may need to offset more than one million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year if restrictions that were removed by Colin Barnett in 2013 are reinstated.
