South West WA's power grid reached a record 91 per cent peak renewable energy share in December - driven by 1,225 MW of new battery storage - while wholesale power prices fell 13 per cent and carbon emissions dropped 15 per cent as coal and gas generation declined.
The green light for Black Mountain Energy comes just months after Federal experts said its environmental risk assessment was "limited and disjointed" and reached "largely unsupported" conclusions.
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.
US oil and gas supermajor Chevron is the major LNG producer in WA with its Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG projects and a share in the North West Shelf project.
Woodside's Pluto project is delivering a tiny sliver of gas to WA compared to other exporters, but the Domgas Alliance wants to change that.
The US giant pretends Labor's policies are thwarting the expansion of its Gorgon and Wheatstone gas plants, which it does not plan to do anyway, to gain leverage with governments.
The $2.3 billion-plus decommissioning on a WA nature reserve will be part-funded by the Federal and WA governments returning about half the royalties they received over six decades.
The WA environment regulator is investigating unknown amounts of hydrocarbons rising to the surface on the Class A nature reserve.
Chevron's disregard for requirements to use WA labour where practical, and to insist its contractors do the same, has been blasted in WA's Parliament.
The US giant, which made $8 billion in Australia in 2024, is forcing its subcontractors to follow its example and send Australian engineering jobs overseas.
Despite local content requirements and a fat profit from Australia, Chevron will now export jobs as well as gas.
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.
Woodside will buy Chevron's one-sixth stake in the North West Shelf project and relinquish its stake in the Wheatstone LNG project to the US major.
The environmental watchdog is set to remove restrictions on climate pollution in months but is much slower looking into concerns about quarantine and turtles on the Barrow Island nature reserve.
Santos and Chevron, through Varanus and Barrow Islands, have a big part to play in the clean up of 1000 oil and gas wells in WA, with about 300 ready to be plugged now.
On July 18 Chevron will be millions of tonnes short of required CO2 injection at Gorgon LNG. If the WA Government stands firm the carbon credit bill could approach $100 million.
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