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.
Yara is a Norwegian fertiliser and chemicals company. It owns the Pilbara Fertilisers liquid ammonia plant on the Burrup Peninsula and half owns and operates the nearby Pilbara Nitrates plant that manufactures explosives. Yara is pursuing the production of emissions-free green and blue ammonia in Australia.
OTCMKTS: YARIY
The shutdown of the Yara Pilbara plant comes as a quarter of global trade in ammonia, used for urea fertiliser and mining explosives, is blocked by war.
Norwegian Yara has big plans for green ammonia in WA's north while local Wesfarmers looks to build another traditional carbon-intensive facility south of Perth.
If CO2 from Yara's Pilbara ammonia plant is buried WA could ship a clean fuel to displace coal in JERA's Japanese power stations, but underground carbon storage has its doubters.
WA will be home to two of the largest green hydrogen electrolysers in the world to feed an ammonia plant and inject the clean fuel into the South West gas grid.
