In what appeared to be a long justification for Woodside and his joint venturers' decision to halt Browse last month, Coleman said that while LNG is the fastest growing of all fossil fuels, natural gas still faces competition, and success will depend on industry's ability to learn from the past.

In what he called a "bold and ambitious" plan, he said it was easy to forget that the NWS that built Woodside into the mid-tier international oiler it is today had been a staged, measured process over many decades of successive developments.

The first phase - the domestic gas phase - started with North Rankin-A platform at a cost of a "mere" $2.5 billion.

Meanwhile the West Australian government, under the "visionary" leadership of Sir Charles Court, invested heavily in a pipeline to carry the gas from the north-west. The government's electricity arm also agreed to a take or pay domestic gas contract over 20 years.

The pipeline itself was later sold for a handsome profit for the state.

The next phase was the LNG component in 1985 following negotiations for long-term contracts with eight Japanese buyers, allowing the first two LNG trains.

A third was added in 1992 alongside another offshore gas platform, another in 2005 and a fifth in 2008.

Coleman said that in a low oil price environment where investors "quite rightly" demand appropriate risk management and financial discipline, he said industry doesn't need to "build the latest long-range aircraft or spaceships to Mars".

"We're in the oil and gas industry, let's stay grounded," was his salient reminder.

"Too often we've tried to do too much all at once, driven by an insatiable desire to grow," Coleman said.

"I expect that LNG projects in the future will be smarter, greener but not always bigger.

"Many of them could well be a series of phased developments."

While Coleman was "not completely ruling out" future big projects, he warned that they're going to need to provide robust returns for investors and returns that inevitably need to survive the downside of the oil and gas business.

In what appeared a more direct challenge to those who bagged Woodside for pursuing Browse as long as it did before canning it, Coleman said the NWS example was also a reminder of timing investments at an appropriate point in the commodity cycle to ensure operators create future value.

"We owe this to our investors and shareholders and especially our customers," he said, which was why Woodside is using the current low point in the commodity cycle to drive home technical advances.

"This means planning to drive out costs with step changes in innovation, technological advances, and we're aiming to position ourselves for FID so we can supply LNG in the early to mid-2020s when the market will be demanding it again," he said.

"We'll be driving home our technological advantage and aiming to have our investments decision-ready for the next cycle when it comes."