Don't forget the North West Shelf's Domgas operation was out for several days in January. This issue has to be addressed.

Could there be a remedy for WA's gas bottleneck problem that doesn't involve building expensive infrastructure that will only be called on in an emergency? Maybe.

Woodside Petroleum has suggested an LNG delivery system for California, called OceanWay. This system would see LNG converted back to natural gas at sea, onboard a regasification tanker that would unload its cargo through two underwater buoys 45km off the Los Angeles coast.

The buoys would be connected to undersea pipelines feeding into local pipeline infrastructure.

A similar system, operated by Excelerate Energy, is already in use on the USA's eastern and Gulf of Mexico seaboards.

Compared to normal regasification terminals, it is relatively cheap and quick to install.

Ships with onboard regasification capabilities are already operating and this unobtrusive buoy-based offtake technology seems likely to become much more widespread.

If any Australian LNG project does start using this technology, the State Government could do much worse than to invest in an OceanWay-type delivery buoy off the coast of Perth, or even off Dongara where the under-used Parmelia pipeline begins.

The LNG spot cargo market is now well developed and gas could easily be found if a similar emergency to the current crisis occurred.

And for the State Government, encouraging Woodside and other prospective WA LNG operators to include ships with regasification capabilities in their fleets makes much more sense than scaring off investors with talk of using emergency powers to seize control of gas supplies.

Of course, this doesn't resolve our current problems, but the time to start making sure this debacle isn't repeated is now.