Woodside sold the project to an insubstantial company to avoid a few hundred million in decommissioning costs: now it and its competitors will pay the price.
Adelaide-based Santos owns the Varanus Island and Devil Creek domestic gas projects in the North West and is developing the Dorado oil field off WA and the Barossa LNG project into Darwin.
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.
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.
Concerns about potential oil leaks caused the safety regulator to bar workers from an area of the MODEC Venture 11 floating production facility off WA for over a week.
Macquarie and Brookfield will have to sell exploration potential in their $4 billion float of Quadrant Energy amid concern its domestic gas plants could run dry in as little as six years.
