SYDNEY – Just four days before he called a federal election last month, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government quietly pushed back a decision that will set the country’s energy path for decades to come.

Few will wonder why. A ruling on whether or not to extend the life of Australia’s biggest and oldest liquefied natural gas export facility, North West Shelf, will help determine how the country will fuel itself and its growth for decades. It’s also guaranteed to create backlash. 

As head of a government that emphasizes its green credentials, should Mr Albanese win May’s election, many voters will expect his Labor Party to ultimately turn the project down – incurring the wrath of fossil fuel powerhouses that account for a chunk of Australia’s exports and of overseas gas buyers.

If Mr Albanese or Liberal Party opponent Peter Dutton go the other way, there will be the ire from Indigenous groups and environmental campaigners, seeking to protect cultural heritage and move the country toward cleaner alternatives.

The vast project has become a symbol of the difficult choices facing one of the world’s largest energy exporters.

“Australia doesn’t want to make a decision because that opens a detailed consideration about needing to replace gas – a major export – with something else, to avoid a major hit to our economy,” said Tina Soliman Hunter, co-director of Macquarie University’s Transforming Energy Markets Research Centre. “You’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t.”

Even by Australian standards, the Woodside Energy Group-operated North West Shelf facility is large. The A$34 billion (S$28.25 billion) project on the edge of Western Australia’s Pilbara region has shipped more than 6,000 LNG cargoes since its first in 1989. Every year it processes enough gas from fields in the Indian Ocean to meet the LNG needs of a medium-sized importer such as Spain.

NWS, as the facility is known, set off what became one of the biggest capital inflows in Australian history – when major oil companies including Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Shell Plc reached investment decisions on eight LNG projects in the five years through 2012, a splurge that would turn the nation into one of the biggest sellers of the fuel. 

But that is now nearing an end. The fields are depleted. Woodside and its venture partners last year were forced to shut one of the project’s ...