Warning to Woodside from Barnett OIL and gas giant Woodside has again been warned by the West Australian government that it will not be given free rein over how it develops the Browse gas project. After doing millions of dollars' worth of preliminary work, Woodside earlier this year decided to commit to floating LNG for the Browse project, off the north-west coast, after rejecting the land-based option favoured by the government, because of inadequate economic returns. Giving evidence to a state government committee on Tuesday, Rob Cole, Woodside's executive vice president of corporate and commercial, said it was still too early to quantify what sort of work WA companies would be offered in the project. But Mr Barnett said whenever Woodside made its decision on how it would proceed, it would still have to also agree to state government conditions. The Premier has previously said WA owned 15 per cent of the gas but on Wednesday put it as high as 20 per cent. "In our estimation, 15 per cent of the gas belongs to WA and we will use that leverage to either get a supply base and hopefully also to get domestic gas into the WA economy," Mr Barnett said. And that is not unreasonable. Every country around the world places conditions on the development of their natural resources. This is not entirely up to Woodside - they do not, to this day, own that gas. It is owned 80 per cent by the Commonwealth and 20 per cent by the states, it is Australia and in particular WA who own that gas. We will have a say in how it is developed.