South Australia has a well-earned reputation as a renewable energy state. Yet, our biggest company – by a long way – is in the fossil fuel business.

Every year for the past eight years, InDaily has published a yearly ranking of the biggest local companies – the South Australian Business Index – based on market capitalisation.

We don’t select the companies – they choose themselves by their performance.

While there are sometimes surprises on the list, there is always one constant – at number one on the ranking, overshadowing all others by a huge margin, is the Adelaide-headquartered oil and gas giant Santos.

How big is Santos’s contribution to the local economy and what does that mean for South Australians at a time when the community, and investors, are increasingly questioning the ethics of investment in fossil fuel companies? How is Santos responding and what does its “decarbonisation” strategy mean?

Today, we talk about Santos: bigger than an elephant in Adelaide’s corporate jungle, it really is the Mammoth in the Room.

Joining David Washington on the podcast this week is InDaily senior journalist Belinda Willis. We also hear from Santos president of midstream and clean fuels, Brett Woods, in his speech to the SA Business Index lunch last week, and Taylor Collison analyst Campbell Rawson on Santos’s strategy to calm nervous institutional investors.

For the latest South Australian Business Index rankings, go to InDaily’s business pages.

Notes on Adelaide is a weekly current affairs podcast driven by the independent journalism of InDaily, CityMag and SALIFE, and produced by Solstice Podcasting.

New episodes are uploaded weekly. You can find the podcast on InDaily or on your favourite podcast app including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Listen to our previous episodes here.