This was supposed to be the year of the deal for Woodside Petroleum. 2019 was supposed to deliver cascading, definitive progress on the road to firm investment decisions on oil in Senegal and the  massive Scarborough liquid natural gas project in the deeps off the West Australian coast.

But for all the understandable bullishness that chief executive Peter Coleman offered at the Australian export gas champion’s investor day in Sydney on Tuesday, the nearest we have to fulfilment of the promised deal flow has been Monday’s rushed confirmation of settlement on how much BHP - its partner in Scarborough  - is going to pay to process gas at Woodside’s wholly owned Pluto processing facility.