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.
Australia is the one of the world's biggest producer of liquefied natural gas. The North West Shelf, Pluto, Gorgon, Wheatstone, Prelude and Ichthys LNG projects source their gas from the waters off WA.
Chevron has another pressure vessel to worry about, this time on the Wheatstone platform, after Gorgon LNG production was slashed this year to fix faulty welds.
Chevron slashes more than $US20 billion off its five-year spend due to lower demand and prices for fossil fuels but allocates just 2% of its 2022 budget to the energy transition.
Al Williams will leave Australia to manage Chevron's global reputation after handling numerous crises in his three years in charge of the Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG projects.
Gorgon LNG has emitted 7 million tonnes of climate-warming CO2 more than permitted but Chevron is unlikely to suffer at the hands of lax Australian governments.
Tomorrow Peter Coleman must convince investment analysts that Woodside has a credible growth plan with Scarborough LNG, and that will take more than spin about a few approvals.
South Korea, Japan and China's tightened climate goals will crunch Australian thermal coal, make LNG investments harder and possibly kill Santos' Barossa LNG project.
Prospects for LNG are under a shadow if Paris Agreement emissions cuts are pursued, according to the IEA, leaving Woodside and Santos in a very dark place.
Researchers at the University of WA are helping to keep the cost of new gas to LNG plants down by allowing longer tiebacks without expensive compression.
