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 failure of Cliff Head's owners, Pilot Energy and Triangle Energy, to meet payroll does not bode well for their ability to pay the $200 million decommissioning cost.
Pilot Energy and Triangle Energy - two listed minnows with no revenue - may struggle to afford to decommission the Cliff Head platform off the WA coast.
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 $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 company that thinks a damaging oil spill from its planned drilling near Scott Reef is "only a mere theoretical possibility" weeks ago accidentally released a cocktail of hydrocarbons, chemicals and water into the Indian Ocean.
