BP has stood down contractors working on its biofuel plant just weeks before discovering if its adjacent green hydrogen project will win $1 billion of government backing.
The Woodside-operated North West Shelf project near Karratha exported Australia's first LNG cargo in 1989 and now has four gas export trains and a domestic gas plant.
If Woodside absorbs BHP's oil & gas assets new laws ensure the massive decommissioning liability falls to one of the companies, not the Australian taxpayer, unlike the Northern Endeavour.
Buying BHP’s Australian oil and gas assets could allow Woodside to escape its lost decade, but its shareholders and Australian taxpayers should count their fingers after the handshake.
Woodside has found corrosion during a shutdown of the North West Shelf's LNG Train 4 that potentially is a serious concern. It is understood Woodside is now inspecting other trains for the problem.
Woodside must check if corrosion on fourteen 24-tonne caissons under an offshore platform could cause them to fall onto subsea pipelines with possibly catastrophic results.
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.
BHP's climate target excludes the Bass Strait, North West Shelf and future Scarborough LNG on the incorrect basis that the operator controls the emissions, not the joint owners.
Shell, Exxon and Chevron are big players in Australian oil and gas and being forced to decarbonise sooner will affect their local operations, with a possible king hit to Prelude.
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 industrial greenhouse gas emissions are dominated by four products and a handful of companies, including a few that have managed to keep a low profile in the climate wars.
Woodside wants to sanction its $US11.4 billion Scarborough LNG project in 2021, but a legal challenge to regulatory approval for years of carbon emissions could put it in a two-year legal limbo.
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.
