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.
The switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy is vital for limiting the damage from climate change and is increasingly the most economically sound choice.
For Woodside, it is Scarborough or bust. Incredibly the LNG specialist has no plan B ready if its last chance to develop an LNG project evaporates. And Scarborough is no sure thing.
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.
