The new environment minister, Murray Watt, says he plans to decide on whether Australia’s biggest-emitting gas development can extend its life until 2070 by the end of the month.
What will he consider in making that decision – and what’s at stake?
What is the North West Shelf?
The North West Shelf development is one of the world’s largest liquified natural gas (LNG) projects. Since the 1980s, gas has been extracted from basins off the Pilbara coast in northern Western Australia and processed at the Karratha gas plant on the Burrup peninsula.
The peninsula and nearby Dampier archipelago are the site of extraordinary Indigenous history. Known as Murujuga, the area is home to an estimated 1m petroglyphs – rock carvings and art – some of which are believed to be nearly 50,000 years old. It has been described as “the largest and oldest outdoor art gallery on Earth”, including the earliest known depictions of a human face.
Woodside Energy, which operates the gas plant, says the development has led to hundreds of millions of dollars’ investment in the local economy and is a “nationally significant asset” that pioneered Australia’s multibillion-dollar LNG industry. It has an annual export capacity of 14.3m tonnes.
The company has approval to continue operating the plant until 2030, but is seeking an extension that could keep it running until 2070. The WA government approved the extension in December. The final decision now sits with Watt. He says he will deliver his verdict by 31 May.
What are the arguments for and against the extension?
Woodside says it would “secure reliable energy for decades to come”, particularly for customers in Japan and South Korea that lack their own energy resources and need Australian gas to keep their economies running.
Critics – including scientists, Indigenous leaders, environment organisations, politicians and a record 759 people who appealed against its state-level approval – say the case for extending the development’s life fails on multiple fronts.
They say there is credible evidence that pollutants from the processing plant are damaging the rock art, and state and federal governments have failed to act despite backing a world heritage bid for Murujuga. And they say processing gas at Karratha until 2070 would be a “carbon bomb”, leading to billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
Climate pollution is released during production, shipping and especially when the gas is burned for energy. Gas supporters say it is a cleaner energy source than coal and expanding its use lowers emissions. But a US study last year found the total emissions from LNG – from extraction to burning overseas – are in some cases greater than coal.
No evidence has been produced by the federal or state governments or the gas industry demonstrating the extent to which Australian gas is displacing coal. Government officials have acknowledged in at least some cases it is likely to be displacing zero-emissions energy sources – solar, wind and nuclear.
Critics also point out that allowing a major fossil fuel processing facility to operate until 2070 is at odds with the goal – shared by Australia and its major trading partners – to reach net zero emissions by mid-century. While some emissions would continue and be offset in a net zero world, fossil fuel use will need to shrink to as close to zero as possible to get there.
There is also a question over whether Japanese companies are buying more LNG from Australia than they need for domestic use. A recent briefing note from the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis suggests last year they onsold a large amount of gas – roughly as much as was used across the Australian east coast – to third countries at a profit.
The gas industry and its political supporters counter that Japan has made clear it needs a reliable gas supply, and that this is mostly met through long-term contracts. They say if Australia stops supplying gas, other countries will just take its place, and it will do nothing to cut global emissions.
Critics call this the “drug dealer’s defence”, and cite experts’ warnings that no new oil and gas basins should be opened if countries are serious about keeping the goals of the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement within reach.
Campaigners say the government should instead accelerate development of new green export industries – the kind promised under its “future made in Australia” legislation – and use diplomatic leverage to encourage client countries to rapidly cut reliance on fossil fuels and back more zero emissions energy.
Are these the issues Watt will be considering?
No, mostly not.
Woodside is seeking approval under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, which does not include a “climate trigger”. That is, the national environment law does not include climate impact as grounds for a development application to be refused.
The government could have changed this, but rebuffed calls from the Greens and independents. It says industrial climate pollution is regulated under a different policy, the safeguard mechanism. But, unlike the EPBC Act, that safeguard mechanism does not clearly give the minister the power to refuse a development outright.
Climate’s absence from the EPBC Act means Watt is likely to be basing his decision on the local impact of the North West Shelf plant only. Which means primarily on rock art.
On this, the question is: who will the minister listen to?
Peer-reviewed research gas found evidence that industrial pollution is “actively degraded” petroglyphs. A list of Labor luminaries including the former federal leader Kim Beazley and former WA premiers Carmen Lawrence and Peter Dowding signed a letter last year calling for the extension to be rejected, in part because it was likely to have a “profound and irreversible” impact on the Murujuga cultural landscape.
Some indigenous custodians have spent years campaigning on the issue. Raelene Cooper, a Mardathoonera woman from Murujuga, in 2022 filed what is known as a section 10 application under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act requesting that the federal government investigate whether the area around the gas plant warranted special heritage protection.
Watt’s predecessor, Tanya Plibersek, agreed, appointing an independent reporter to investigate and received the resulting report nearly two years ago, but didn’t act on it. On Thursday, Cooper launched legal action in the federal court to try to force Watt to respond to the cultural heritage report before he decides on the North West Shelf extension. It was unclear late on Friday if that application would affect Watt’s plans to make a decision in the next week.
Cooper’s message contrasted with a statement on Friday afternoon by the WA government and the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, made up of members from five traditional language groups. They said an 800-page rock art monitoring report had found there had been damage to some rock, probably due to inflated industrial emissions in the 1970s, but levels of key pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide had declined since 2014. They said there was no evidence that acid rain was affecting the art.
Speaking to the ABC, Benjamin Smith, a professor of archeology and world rock art expert at the University of Western Australia, suggested this made little sense as there was little industry in the region in the 1970s. He said pollution at Murujuga was now close to its peak and “at very dangerous levels by international standards”.
“We shouldn’t delude ourselves with the evidence presented here,” he said. “There are absolutely definitive signs that the rock art is eroding.”
If approved, where does Woodside plan to get the gas from?
This is not central to Watt’s legal decision, but it is a significant question.
One of the criticisms made of the North West Shelf extension proposal is that it assumes Woodside will have enough gas to process for decades ahead. At the moment, it doesn’t. It plans to partly address this by developing the vast Browse basin, about 300km off the WA coast.
Browse lies above Scott Reef, which is home to a coral reef ecosystem that has more than 1,500 species, many unique to the area and some at risk of extinction. The WA Environment Protection Authority (EPA) formed a preliminary view that the risks from developing the gas basin would be “unacceptable”. The WA government later pushed through laws changing how the EPA operates. Woodside is still seeking state and federal approval of the development.
Campaigners argue the North West Shelf extension and Browse basin development should be considered together, given one depends on the other. But they are considered separate developments under state and federal law.
If Watt does approve the North West Shelf extension, an upcoming decision on developing Browse will loom even larger.
