There's more to the story around the FPSO than is easily found...

There's more to the story around the FPSO than is easily found online / in the news. Had a conversation with someone involved in the project and the story is far more complicated.

The first exploitation plan was turned back by the government because no work had been done on the gas phase to mature it to a more mature status, to the government the gas phase represents dom gas and local economic activity so they pushed for details and commitments for this upfront.

Up until the end the government kept this as a priority and continuously pushed for more in the gas phase, earlier and bigger gas phase (even though there is no guaranteed market) -it basically required more flexibility in the FPSO design than the lease would cover.

What's hard to tell is how much WPL pushed back and tried to negotiate on the JV's side, how hard they tried to push the JV view vs how much their objectives aligned with the government, and how much flexibility the FPSO lease operator had or wanted to get out (WPL won an arbitration case where they terminated a lease early on the Balnaves oil field which may have had an impact on the desire of the FPSO operator to find an escape clause too).

Of course I can't find anything online to back up this version of events - there are people here who will likely find this version hard to swallow - they were convinced the government was on their side of arbitration and FAR was whispering in the governments ear the whole time.