No profit, falling production, inadequate maintenance, a safety plan in limbo and a big clean-up if exploration fails: challenges aplenty at the Canadian company's only offshore facility.
Santos' decommissioning liability matches a quarter of its $22b value, but its disclosures to investors fared poorly against the latest accounting standards, according to an international survey.
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.
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.
