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.
Chevron has paid the Australian Taxation Office $US654 million ($866 million) under a partial settlement of its dispute with the tax office over intercompany loans and slashed the interest rate it charged its Australian subsidiary.
The Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG projects are now enjoying cash margins of more than $US30 a barrel at a $US50 price and production from the $111 billion mega-projects is expected to increase.
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.
Woodside chief executive Peter Coleman hopes the ramp-up of Wheatstone goes well as the Perth-based group braces for a big reduction in its domestic gas sales in 2017
Chevron’s budget and schedule for the Wheatstone LNG project face questions from significant unplanned work underway on the project’s offshore platform.
