Wheatstone shows carbon tax no disincentive: Ferguson

Artists impression of Wheatstone

The greenlight for the $29 billion Wheatstone LNG project in Western Australia showed that major energy companies were not deterred from investing in Australia by the carbon pricing regimes, according to Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson.Oil giant Chevron and its joint venture partners this week announced the final go ahead for Wheatstone, which will initially consist of two processing units with a combined capacity of 8.9 million metric tons of LNG a year and a domestic gas plant. The Wheatstone announcement follows the greenlight for the $43 billion Gorgon LNG project in WA.
“Every time we get another final investment decision it reinforces that we can take action on carbon pricing, but also continue to be attractive from an investment point of view,” Ferguson told reporters in Perth.
“The next one, potentially, is Ichthys,” he said in a reference to the LNG project offshore northern Australia majority owned by Japan’s Inpex Corp.
Other big LNG projects approved in Australia this year include Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s Prelude floating LNG project and the Australia-Pacific LNG project fed by coal seam gas in Queensland.