Western Australia’s 15th overseas international office will be operational in California before the end of the year.
It has yet to be decided whether it will be based in Los Angeles, San Francisco or San Diego.
Premier Geoff Gallop told last week’s WA Business News Success & Leadership breakfast the focus on the US west coast was linked to America’s energy policy, which envisaged greater reliance on natural gas.
“We want to build on the success we’ve got in North-East Asia and the Middle East and put in an increasing effort into promoting WA in the global market,” Dr Gallop said.
“Both India and the west coast of America are places we’ll be giving a much greater focus for our exports and trading relationships.
“We are on track to opening a new office in California by the end of this year.
“We want to capitalise on the free trade agreement as well as the considerable prospects for liquefied natural gas (LNG) sales into America following the trade delegation that I led a couple of years ago.
“We want to build on that, to keep the momentum going and we’ve seen in the US, with their energy policy, that LNG is going to play a bigger role and we want that office assisting in that process.”
Eight of WA’s 14 current offices are in just four countries – two each in China, India, Indonesia and Japan.
The others are in Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and the UK.
The London office is billed as representation in Europe.
