Western Australian Premier Roger Cook yesterday (6 July) was en route to Japan for high-level talks for continuing collaboration on the clean energy transition.
The meetings with government and industry stakeholders aims to also reinforce Western Australia’s longstanding relationship with Japan.
This mission will be the first official trip the Premier has taken to Japan since being returned to government earlier this year. It comes ahead of his visit in September to World Expo 2025 Osaka, where the Western Australian Government joined the Commonwealth Government as a Gold Partner at the Australian Pavillion.
In early October 2025, Western Australia will host the 62nd Australia Japan Business Co-operation Committee (AJBCC) Annual Joint Business Conference with the theme: Navigating New Realities – Turbulence, Transition and Technology.
The Premier says Japan is a significant investor in Western Australia, with decades long partnerships in the state’s resources sector.
The country is also the state’s second largest trading partner with two-way trade worth $29.8 billion in 2024.
“Japan has been a valued customer of Western Australian energy for decades. I am optimistic this will continue as we support their energy transition with LNG and pursue next generation fuels like hydrogen and ammonia,” Cook says.
Since 1989, Western Australia has shipped liquified natural gas to Japan, helping meet the energy needs of Japanese industry and households.
The role that WA’s continuing LNG exports will play in Japan’s energy transition will be an important discussion topic for the trip, as will opportunities for mutually beneficial co-operation across areas such as carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), hydrogen, ammonia and green iron.
Established in 1985 between Mitsubishi Corporation (TYO:8058) and Mitsui & Co (TYO:8031), the MIMI 50:50 joint venture holds a one-sixth equity interest in Woodside’s (ASX:WDS) North West Shelf Venture, producing natural gas, LNG, condensate, crude oil and LPG from the enormous gas and oil fields located on the North West Shelf, offshore Karratha in Western Australia.
The North West Shelf Project is Australia’s largest resource project and one of the world’s largest producers of LNG.
Also having a 14.4% equity interest in the Browse Joint Venture, MIMI remains committed to the earliest commercial development of Browse resources, located offshore approximately 425 km north of Broome in Western Australia.
The 50:50 joint venture between Mitsubishi and Mitsui has its head office is based in Perth, Western Australia.
Meanwhile, Asia’s second-largest economy Japan is reportedly seeking to reactivate its nuclear energy plants for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, as reported by this news service today.
Reports say Japan is now laying the groundwork for its long-idled nuclear energy reactors to restart, amid rising gas prices and power-consuming data centres causing a reassessment of its nuclear policy following the earthquake and tsunami disaster 14 years ago.
Write to Adam Orlando at Mining.com.au
Images: Unsplash & Woodside
