Woodside tips in cash as Labor fights to get its employee into parliament
WA Labor has used the advantages of incumbency to raise $1.6 million since May, ahead of a by-election in the once safe seat of Secret Harbour.
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.
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.
Extended offshore rosters can be bad for the mental health of workers and the safety of the facility, warns offshore safety regulator NOPSEMA.
NOPSEMA has given the environmental credentials of Woodside's Scarborough LNG project a regulatory tick and gushing praise.
Woodside has dropped plans for a 12-week work roster blasted by unions as "catastrophically unsafe" and will move to a temporary roster of two weeks of isolation, four weeks work and two weeks at home to manage COVID-19 risk.
Woodside's offshore workers may get a $50,000 bonus for working 12 weeks straight but unions claim the long stint is unsafe.
Offshore unions have welcomed a deal with Inpex that adds two-weeks of isolation to the roster and gives half-pay to stood-down workers but slammed what they say is a Woodside proposal to work offshore for 12 weeks straight.
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.
Woodside had planned for 2020 and 2021 to be years of growth but now the Scarborough and Browse LNG projects are deferred and $US20.4 billion slashed from this years' budget as it joins its peers in survival mode.
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