A prince, traditional owners and a ‘carbon bomb': Inside Woodside's extension plans

The Age

3 days ago

When Prince Charles toured Murujuga on Western Australia's north-west tip with Ngarluma man David Daniel in 1994, he passed antiquities older than Stonehenge, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Tower of Jericho combined.
Home to more than 1 million petroglyphs, or carvings, Murujuga – which documents 47,000 years of human history – hosts the largest collection of rock art in the world. Among them are engravings of spirits, humans and animals including thylacines, extinct on the Australian mainland for more than 2000 years.
Traditional owners describe Murujuga as a living library, which – for those who know how to read the rocks – tell stories about earthly and spiritual realms, men's and women's business, and even how to butcher a kangaroo.
Less than 10 kilometres away, on the opposite edge of a vast flat that once served as a meeting place, is Woodside's vast Karratha gas processing plant.
On Wednesday, newly minted Environment Minister Murray Watt gave preliminary approval to the Woodside Energy's bid to extend the life of its North West Shelf project – comprising a vast network of offshore oil and gas infrastructure and the onshore gas processing hub in Karratha – until 2070.
The Climate Council said the decision locked in more than 4 billion tonnes of climate pollution – equivalent to a decade of Australia's annual emissions – and would 'haunt' the Albanese government.
Hours before Watt announced he had given preliminary approval to Woodside's expansion plans, it was revealed the United Nations intends to deny an Australian bid for Murujuga's ancient art to be given World Heritage status, due to the impacts of Woodside's 'degrading acidic emissions' on the petroglyphs.
UNESCO instead recommends the 'total removal' of emissions from the area and urged the Australian government to 'prevent any further industrial development adjacent to, and within, the Murujuga Cultural Landscape'.
For its part, Woodside said the decision would allow the oil and gas giant to continue to produce LNP for domestic and export markets while markets 'decarbonise' from coal. The project, it maintains, is critical to securing jobs and gas supply.
Executive vice president Liz Westcott said the North West Shelf project had paid more than $40 billion in royalties and taxes since the start of operations in 1984.
'This proposed approval will secure the ongoing operation of the North West Shelf and the thousands of direct and indirect jobs that it supports,' she said.
'This nationally significant infrastructure has supplied reliable and affordable energy to Western Australia for 40 years and international customers for 35 years and will be able to continue its contribution to energy security.'
The project is a major employer in the state, supporting 900 direct jobs and about 1300 contractor positions. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has described gas as a 'firming capacity' to support the transition to renewables.
But the project's extension has been staunchly opposed by conservationists, climate scientists and traditional owners.
Climate councillor Greg Bourne, a former North West Shelf manager with BP, said 4 billion tonnes of greenhouse emissions would be generated by the project over its lifespan – equivalent to a decade of Australia's total emissions.
'Extending the North West Shelf will haunt the Albanese government,' he said.
'They've just approved one of the most polluting fossil fuel projects in a generation, fuelling climate chaos for decades to come.'
Climate scientist Bill Hare described the government's decision as extreme, and said it underscored a disconnection between the federal government's efforts to curtail domestic emissions and its support for ongoing fossil fuel exports.
'I think it [sends] a destructive message, actually, because the world is trying to stop the warming, and then we go and make a huge decision as a country to continue adding to this problem for 50 years,' he said.
'Country is crying out'
More than 30 years after Prince Charles walked through Murujuga's living library, David Daniel's daughters, Ngarluma/Yindjibarndi traditional owners Regina and Kaylene Daniel, are also speaking up for this sacred space.
'You can feel the Country hurting; you can sense it,' Regina said.
'Our mum would say Murujuga was like a big library for us. It is a library. It is our library, our stories. It's our next generation's story to pass on to the next generation. We don't want to destroy it. We want it protected.'
Kaylene said the sisters had watched the destruction of sections of Murujuga, on the Burrup Peninsula, when Woodside's Karratha plant was constructed in the 1980s.
'We've seen the way the Country used to be … where the construction and the building is now, we used to get bush tucker, bush medicine ... you used to see kangaroos out there.'
In the 1980s, when Woodside constructed its Karratha plant, thousands of petroglyphs were bulldozed to make way for the facility. It's a memory that pains Regina and Kaylene, who describe Woodside's promise of more jobs for the region as 'more jobs for more destruction'.
'When you get connected to Country ... Country tells you,' Regina said. 'Country is crying out for help.'
Woodside has long harboured ambitions to expand its gas operations in the resource-rich north-west of the state, seeking for years to develop the Calliance, Brecknock and Torosa gasfields in the Browse Basin, 425 kilometres north of Broome, and pipe gas to an onshore hub for processing.
In 2013, a Woodside-led consortium was forced to abandon ambitious plans for a gas hub at James Price Point in the Kimberley region to produce gas from the Browse Basin, after the Supreme Court of WA upheld a legal challenge by Goolarabooloo traditional custodian Richard Hunter and the Wilderness Society.
After the James Price Point proposal collapsed, Woodside turned its sights to Karratha – about 900 kilometres from the Browse Basin – to process the untapped reserves. The North West Shelf extension approval paves the way for this to happen.
In December, West Australian Premier Roger Cook's government gave its approval to the North West Shelf extension, subject to a raft of conditions, including that Woodside review its measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions within 12 months of the approval, and then on a five-yearly basis.
The oil and gas giant would also be required to lodge a new marine management plan before 2026, document its environmental performance, monitor air quality and consult Murujuga traditional landowners.
Watt's preliminary approval of the project is also subject to what he described as 'strict conditions'. But the precise conditions will not be revealed until the post-approval statutory 10-day time frame for Woodside to make comment on the conditions has run its course.
Critics say the 45 additional years the project is set to operate threaten to undermine Australia's commitments under the Paris Agreement to limit dangerous climate change.
The Climate Council points out the forecast emissions from the North West Shelf project (90 million tonnes per year) would be higher than New Zealand's annual output in 2023 of 76.4 million tonnes.
Emeritus Professor Alex Gardner, an environmental law expert with the University of Western Australia, said about 90 per cent of emissions emanating from the project would be sent offshore. Australia could not absolve itself of responsibility for these emissions, he said.
'Every tonne of CO2 emitted, regardless of when or where, leads to the same warming,' he said.
The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released in 2023, showed the existing 'carbon budget' – before the world reached 1.5 degrees of global warming above pre-industrial levels – had already been spent.
'Projected CO2 emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure without additional abatement ...would exceed the remaining carbon budget for 1.5 [degrees],' he said.
'All the things that are in place now, if you burn all that fossil fuel, will exceed 1.5 … the world's authority on climate change science has said we don't need any new gas fields.'
As the deadline for Watt's decision neared, environment groups and advocates launched desperate attempts to slow the process.
On May 23, traditional custodian Raelene Cooper lodged legal action in the Federal Court seeking to compel Watt to decide on her application for a cultural heritage assessment for Murujuga, under section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act.
Her application had been sitting with the federal government for more than three years.
'I am furious that the minister would make a decision to lock in ongoing and irreversible damage to my country before addressing my application,' Cooper said before Watt's announcement on Wednesday.
'I am sickened that the minister would make such a decision without even paying us the respect of coming here to meet with the custodians of this place, and without even seeing the incredible Murujuga rock art with his own eyes.
'The minister does not even have the respect to come and see for himself what he will be allowing Woodside to destroy.'
Speaking after the decision, Cooper said: 'See you in court.'
'Degrading acidic emissions'
The federal government formally nominated Murujuga National Park for World Heritage status in 2023, in recognition of the 5000-hectare site's cultural significance.
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But that nomination was dashed this week, when the agenda for UNESCO's July meeting went online, revealing the United Nations is poised to knock back Australia's application for World Heritage listing for the Murujuga rock art.
Instead, the body recommended Australia attend to the 'total removal of degrading acidic emissions' that are affecting the rock carvings, or petroglyphs.
The largest source of emissions is Woodside's North West Shelf gas processing facility, which is less than 10 kilometres from between 1 million and 2 million petroglyphs.
'The current system isn't delivering'
Karratha, like so many other towns in the far reaches of Western Australia, is a mining centre. To get here from Perth means walking past airport gate after airport gate filled with a sea of high-vis-wearing workers.
On the early morning flight, about 90 per cent of the passengers are men, and most wear the fluoro yellow or orange uniforms of the major companies running west coast industries.
Watt's decision on Woodside's future here has been welcomed by the oil and gas industry, which describes the North West Shelf as a critical economic driver in the region.
But in nearby Roebourne, home to many traditional owners, the economic benefits of this juggernaut are thin on the ground.
In 2013-17, the median age of death in West Pilbara was just 55 years compared with 80 across Western Australia. At the 2021 census, 28.5 per cent of residents in Roebourne were in the labour force, compared with 63.9 per cent of West Australians.
'The data highlights a stark contrast between the substantial wealth generated by industry in the Pilbara and the continued socio-economic challenges faced by Ngarda-Ngarli [Aboriginal] communities,' Ngarluma Yindjibarndi Foundation chief executive Sean-Paul Stephens said.
'While industry is thriving, too many of our members are still grappling with the basics – life expectancy remains alarmingly low, and families often rely on food rescue programs to get by. This tells us that the current system isn't delivering equitable outcomes.'
Watt spent much of his second week in WA dealing with the two biggest issues of his portfolio: Woodside's expansion plans and the government's nature positive laws.
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He told ABC radio in Perth last week that he saw his role as serving a dual purpose.
'The way I see my role is ... to be the guardian of the environment and to oversee the regulation of our environmental laws when it comes to projects,' he said.
'But also part of my job is to help facilitate sustainable economic development going forwards. We know that WA in particular relies very heavily on the mining and resources sector. And we do want to see projects go ahead but in a way that doesn't irretrievably damage our environment.'