An expert, independent of government and industry, explains how prolonged industrial activity on the Burrup Peninsula in WA endangers an Australian marvel.
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.
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.
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.
BP, unlike Chevron, remains committed to Woodside-operated North West Shelf LNG as it waits to drill nearby Ironbark, but Browse is unlikely to meet its investment criteria.
Chevron's slice of the North West Shelf LNG project is touted as ideal for infrastructure investors. It is the opposite - highly risky, complex and dysfunctional.
Santos is now the biggest supplier of gas to WA and the future may depend on the Perth Basin after the State's almost four decades of reliance on Australia's first LNG plant.
Peter Coleman's challenges: an ageing plant, high cost gas, partner churn and global forces making the LNG game tougher than anyone envisaged a few years ago.
If Woodside's argument that a reef's environmental benefit outweighs 400 tonnes of plastic in the ocean wins over NOPSEMA then leaving everything on the seabed could become the default option for Australia's oil and gas players.
