Well, that was certainly a busy week in the region's energy sector.

The week was bookended with two massive announcements from the Australian federal government, with the latter inextricably linked to the former.

Monday brought us all the huge wake-up call/scaremonger effort* by the government with the release of the National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA) - the nation's first comprehensive risk analysis posed by climate change across Australia – as well as the less eye-catching but equally important National Adaptation Plan.

The authors of the report certainly didn't pull their punches, with a host of scenarios of life in 2050 looking remarkably different from life in 2025. In fact, all that was missing was predictions of plagues of locusts, raining frogs and fire and brimstone.

It was a sobering forecast of what's to come which the government hopes will act as a warning to everyone – from the man and woman on the street to (importantly for the government) the nation's industrial and business leaders at the top of their gleaming, CBD spires.

And then yesterday, to round out the week, the government of course released their long-awaited and endlessly discussed emissions reductions target for 2035.

A range between 62% and 70% was the final outcome of the work done by Matt Kean's Climate Change Authority on which the PM's announcement was based.

"So, it's 62%" as my deputy editor glibly said when it was announced.

With a host of reactions from all the vested parties ranging from "ambitious" to "weak" and a "failing of our nation's youth", the devil as always is in the detail but the government has nailed its colours to the mast in no uncertain terms.

With analysts increasingly saying the 2030 target is going to be missed, we'll all be watching very carefully to see how we fare against the 2035 target – especially now we know unequivocably what lies in store for us if we don't reduce our emissions.

But what's struck me is the element of the human in these two massive announcements from the government, the manner in which it's the impact on real people which they have sought to highlight in their forecasting and modelling.

Streuth, they even brought into play the threat to the Aussie way of life. If anything's going to shock us into action it's that.

And then – as if to reinforce the importance of the human being in these huge issues – comes the little story of the proposed and now disappearing into the ether takeover of Santos by an Abu-Dhabi based consortium.

This deal would have been one of the biggest in the history of corporate Australia. A $30 billion deal passing the reins of a household name to a conglomerate run out of the Middle East.

And what was it that put pay to the deal? Did XRG find some metaphorical skeletons in Santos' closet? Were they rattled by the scrutiny with which Jim Chalmers would have looked at the deal?

No, not at all. What really put pay to the deal was a strongly worded (now increasingly looking like too strongly worded) letter from Santos' chair Keith Spence to XRG.

Spence, seemingly frustrated by the delays with the protracted negotiations ("the Santos Board had expressed its concern to the XRG Consortium about delays in agreeing the SIA" reads the press release), wrote to XRG demanding the consortium finalise the deal, compensate shareholders for any more delays which might occur, take on a tax liability worth potentially hundreds of millions of dollars and commit to domestic gas in Australia.

And hours later, the deal was off. As simple as that. An overly demanding, overly prescriptive letter sent from Adelaide to Abu Dhabi signalled an end to the possibility of any deal being reached.

Santos' statement to the media said: "The XRG Consortium would not agree to acceptable terms which protected the value of the potential transaction for Santos shareholders."

Perhaps Spence should ask the people writing the company's press releases for some lessons in taking the heat out of important communications.

Yours, 

Russell Yeo