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.
Inpex thinks the value of Prelude floating LNG has dropped 37% this year, joining the queue of companies seeing much less value in Australia's LNG future.
Chevron has "put additional mitigations in place" to protect workers while it mulls what to do with two giant LNG trains operating at Gorgon that could have defective welds.
Chevron intends to have cracked propane vessels fixed and Gorgon LNG back in full production by September as it awaits inspection by the safety regulator.
The safety and economic stakes for Gorgon LNG are high as WA Government inspectors soon head to Barrow Island to check on Chevron's cracked pressure vessels.
Safety regulators knew nothing of cracked pressure vessels at Chevron's Gorgon LNG plant until alerted by media reports and now plan to inspect the equipment themselves.
Thousands of cracks raise questions about the safety of the Gorgon LNG plant and operator Chevron will decide to shutdown or maintain revenue, with the safety regulator on the sidelines.
Cost, climate concerns and delay have killed Woodside's Browse LNG project and now it must negotiate with its old foes, the North West Shelf partners, to ensure Scarborough is developed.
If Western Gas' Equus LNG project does not take off in these tough times neither the small company nor regulator NOPTA have an answer to how making safe the wells is paid for.
Shell has followed BP in thinking its oil and gas assets are now worth much less in a post-COVID more climate-aware world and Prelude LNG is a big contributor to the value destruction.
Delays in offshore oil and gas maintenance after COVID-19 workforce cuts worries safety regulator NOPSEMA and unions, who have pointed to Inpex's Ichthys LNG project as a concern.
