Business | Schumpeter

The supermajors have an LNG problem

State-owned giants are squeezing them out of megaprojects

BARROW ISLAND, off the coast of Western Australia, is an unlikely place to find what will with luck become the high-water mark of the hubris of the West’s international oil companies (IOCs). It is a nature reserve dotted with termite mounds. Since it was severed from the mainland about 8,000 years ago, its local species, including golden bandicoots and spectacled hare-wallabies, have lived free from predators. Some call it Australia’s Galapagos. Yet a sliver of it is also home to one of the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) developments, mostly owned by Chevron (47%), ExxonMobil (25%) and Royal Dutch Shell (25%).

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “The Gorgon knot”

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