Asia's fossil fuel industry readies to once again talk up carbon capture and storage (CCS) as the technology that lets us keep burning coal and gas, while still hitting our climate targets.
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.
The next Woodside chief executive will be the first to decide what to do apart from gas. Low-profile BHP Petroleum head Geraldine Slattery is a lead contender to take charge of this pivotal WA company.
Much of the $52 billion cost to decommission Australia's offshore oil and gas infrastructure will fall on the Federal Government via the tax system and work has started to boost industry collaboration and find cost savings.
Ichthys LNG is giving Inpex and Australia a huge carbon pollution problem that is likely to grow as the Japanese company looks to troublesome carbon capture and storage to limit the environmental and financial damage.
Singapore's Pavilion Energy will buy Australian LNG from Chevron with certified greenhouse emissions, in another sign that Asian buyers are favouring less carbon-intensive gas.
Gorgon LNG's carbon emissions will jump by more than one million tonnes a year until Chevron fixes an underground pressure management problem that caused WA's safety regulator to curtail CO2 injection by two-thirds.
Technical problems at Gorgon and Wheatstone will give Chevron Australia another year of reduced LNG production while US headquarters remains hesitant about the energy transition.
The WA safety regulator has told Chevron to turn down Australia's $3.1 billion showpiece Gorgon LNG carbon capture and storage system until problems are fixed, meaning carbon emissions will rise.
BP's Ironbark well off WA is a duster with "no significant hydrocarbon shows" killing hopes of gas supply to the North West Shelf LNG plant and crashing shares in Cue and NZ Oil and Gas.
The Conservation Council has launched legal action against Woodside and the WA Government that may reopen environmental approvals essential to the Scarborough and Browse LNG projects.
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.
