The state-owned utility needs to replace the generation capacity it will lose by closing down all its coal-fired power stations over the next four years.
The Perth-based LNG specialist operates the North West Shelf and Pluto LNG projects and is developing the Scarborough and Browse fields. It also has a 50 per cent stake in ExxonMobil's Bass Strait operation and substantial interests in the US and Mexico.
Hundreds of 7000-year-old Aboriginal artefacts found off the Pilbara coast highlight a new issue for oil and gas to maintain its social license, with Woodside's Scarborough project at the forefront.
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.
Woodside's Pluto LNG plant has delivered less that one per cent of its gas to WA due to a 2006 WA Government deal that appeared generous then and looks feeble now.
In a decade hydrogen made with renewable power may be cheaper than making it from gas and offsetting the emissions according to an independent expert analysis but Woodside thinks gas has 30 years left.
If Scarborough, considered the most economic of Woodside's two projects, was uncompetitive before LNG prices crashed then plans will have to change on the Burrup Peninsula.
Woodside is struggling to portray itself as both green and gassy with mixed messages about carbon emissions, the threat from renewables and why all the way with LNG is a sound long term strategy.
New WA projects will need to publish plans for net-zero emissions by 2050 as the WA Environmental Protection Authority ends a year-long battle with LNG industry.
