Regular readers of ENB will know that carbon capture and storage (CCS) and decommissioning are two topics which feature prominently on our pages.

So, you can only imagine the excitement felt when one story came along which encompassed them both.

Sadly, that was short-lived as unravelling the full details of the story will doubtless reveal.

So first the CCS side of the story.

The Cliff Head platform, off the Western Australian coast, has for the last few years been envisaged as a prospective CCS project – ripe for the burying of carbon dioxide (CO2) far beneath the seabed and away from where it can cause harm.

According to the plans, CO2 would be brought to the site by a tanker which would moor at a jettyless offshore terminal and would then be pumped under the seabed into the depleted reservoir, while all monitoring and operations management would be handled from the nearby converted platform.

And the numbers were impressive. When operating, the project's developers said it could provide more than 1 million tonnes per annum of permanent CO2 storage continuing through 2050, putting it in the world's top ten projects on a capacity basis.

Oil production at the Cliff Head field officially ended in September 2024, with a directive issued by the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) a few months earlier to shut in and secure the wells.

The cessation of production marked the end of a 20-year operational run since the field was first brought online in 2006, owned as part of a joint venture between two notably small petroleum companies.

However, despite the grand plans the platform and field have become something of a white elephant as the junior partner – Pilot Energy – appeared strapped for cash in its endeavours to buy it lock, stock and barrel from the major partner Triangle Energy and in turn develop into their CCS dream.

And it's this lack of liquidity which has seemingly reached its zenith this week and turned the story from one of hopeful and ambitious CCS to decommissioning. And more importantly, who's going to fit the bill.

Because if there's one thing we at ENB like more than CCS and decom, it's the Northern Endeavour. And it appears we might have a mark II on our hands.

When the Northern Endeavour was nearing the end of its useful lifetime (and that's still up for debate), the receivers were called in on the last owners of the vessel - Northern Oil and Gas Australia (NOGA). This left the huge, ageing vessel stuck in the Timor Sea without an owner and without anyone to oversee its necessary decommissioning.

So, as many of you will know, the government stepped in to acquire the vessel, implemented a levy on the oil and gas sector to ensure the tax payer didn't have to foot the multi-billion dollar decom bill and the rest, as they say, is history being chopped up in a Danish breaker's yard.

And so now, as Pilot Energy voluntarily this week calls in administrators and Triangle first implements an ASX trading halt and then a suspension of trading, things are not looking good for the minnow owner operators.

And that raises the same question again – who's going to pay for the decom work that'll be needed if the pair – and the CCS plan – bite the dust?

In the case of the Northern Endeavour it was a Liberal government who set up the levy. But the current resources minister Madeleine King has already said, if similar circumstances were to ever occur again she would have no hesitation in doing the same.

The notion of the oil and gas industry clearing up after themselves might seem appropriate but the anger felt throughout blameless oil and gas companies who have little or more likely nothing to do with either the Northern Endeavour or Cliff Head is perhaps understandable.

But what other option does the government have?

Well, they could have perhaps done as has been suggested on numerous occasions in the recent past and legislate for a financial assurance framework which would ensure oil and gas companies who seemingly have the funds to set up a going petroleum concern also have the means to tidy everything away at the end of the day.

Warnings have been made by many an industry watcher and indeed assurances have been obtained that the government would never allow such an occurrence to ever happen again.

Well, minister King, we're all watching and waiting for your next move.