Currently under the State Agreement, which details the commitments of the $11 billion venture, the partners will be barred from expanding the Barrow Island gas project unless a pipeline is built to bring gas to the mainland for the domestic market.

Until the venture supplies at least a proposal for a pipeline capable of pumping 300 terajoules of gas a day to the mainland it will be restricted to a single LNG production train on the island. The partners have already targeted a two train project producing 10 million tones of LNG per year.

However, the State Agreement introduced into state Parliament yesterday says the delivery of domestic gas will be subject to a commercial viability test.

If an independent expert concludes domestic demand does not warrant the construction of an onshore pipeline from Barrow Island, the Gorgon joint venture partners, ChevronTexaco, Shell and ExxonMobil, could move ahead with the construction of the second LNG train without supplying gas to the WA market.

As a fallback clause for the government the venture will be subject to auditing of its marketing program to make sure a solid attempt is being made to get the domestic phase completed and 15% of Gorgon's 12.9 trillion cubic feet of gas is reserved for domestic purposes.

Currently a domestic gas phase is considered unlikely to be commercially viable without the support of a gas-hungry major industrial project.