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.
WA Premier Mark McGowan warned Alcoa to lift its game or face curtailed mining, but his successor Roger Cook slashed water supply protections after a possibly empty threat from the US miner.
The WA Environmental Protection Authority reviews the environmental impacts of all sizeable developments and makes non-binding recommendations to the WA Minister for Environment.
Woodside has told investors it can afford to bury CO2 from its Browse LNG project just months after telling regulators it was a "high-risk, high-cost" option.
Emissions-heavy corporate Western Australia wants the WA Environmental Protection Authority to leave control of greenhouse gases to the Federal Government.
Chevron's Wheatstone LNG project may need to offset more than one million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year if restrictions that were removed by Colin Barnett in 2013 are reinstated.
