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.
WA energy minister Bill Johnston sees no current alternative to gas for dispatchable power and wants to use low prices to lure more gas-hungry investments to WA
Plentiful and cheap gas to WA may be undermined by pressure from North West Shelf LNG participants and Perth Basin producers for the McGowan Government to weaken its ban on the export of onshore gas.
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.
WA's competition regulator has accepted that competition from renewable energy will shrink the economic life of the Dampier to Bunbury gas pipeline by more than three decades.
Santos' Reindeer gas field will fill with water sooner than expected and the production loss will add to concerns about the supply of gas to WA this decade.
Chevron, Santos and Kerry Stokes' BCI Minerals are battling in court over responsibility for gas pipelines supplying 40 per cent of the WA market that traverse the $780 million Mardie salt project.
