Western Australia has one story about the gas industry. It won’t accept dissent from ‘over east’

The implications of a 50-year extension for the North West Shelf LNG plant on WA’s Burrup peninsula may prove a key issue at the federal election, if not Saturday’s state poll. Photograph: Michael Jalaru Torres/The Guardian

Western Australia is as vast as western Europe, has fewer people than Wales and is one of the most remote places on Earth. Globally, it punches above its weight in mining and shipping iron ore and, increasingly over the past decade, fossil fuels. Specifically, gas.

WA exports more liquefied natural gas than every country bar the US and Qatar, according to government data.