Unless something remarkable – the federal court, perhaps – intervenes, the Albanese government will this week make a decision that could have ramifications for greenhouse gas emissions and Indigenous heritage that last for decades – or longer. It relates to the future of the North West Shelf, one of the world’s largest liquified natural gas (LNG) projects.
Most discussion about it assumes that it is a done deal – that the environment minister, Murray Watt, will give the green light to an application by Woodside Energy to extend the life of the gas export processing facility on the Burrup peninsula in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
The plant has been operating since the late 1980s and has approval to run until 2030. Woodside wants to be able to keep it going until 2070 – well beyond when Australia and the countries it sells gas to have pledged to reach net zero emissions. The extension could allow hundreds of millions more tonnes of LNG to be processed and shipped, and up to 6bn tonnes of carbon dioxide to be released once the gas is burned, a sum that qualifies as a “carbon bomb” that would help blow up the goals of the Paris climate agreement. (You can read more about the arguments relating to the development’s climate impact here.)
A decision was scheduled for before the federal election. Watt’s predecessor, Tanya Plibersek, delayed it until 31 May, saying federal officials needed more time to provide their advice. The new minister had been in the environment ministerial portfolio less than a week when he indicated that the impasse was over – he planned to make an announcement by that deadline.
We don’t know what led the minister to so quickly become confident that he could make an informed call. We do know that the project has been proposed for a long while, and that there has been significant pressure from Woodside, gas and mining organisations, the WA Labor government and some news media for it to be resolved.
Watt will not be directly considering the role of North West Shelf gas in driving the climate crisis as he makes his decision. A long list of people – including, 20 years ago, Anthony Albanese himself – have called for the introduction of a “climate trigger” so that atmospheric emissions would be grounds for refusing or limiting a development under national environment law. There is an obvious logic to this, given the black-and-white evidence that climate pollution is damaging the environment. But Albanese now disagrees.
With climate impact largely removed from the issues Watt has to consider, the biggest factor he has to weigh is what local pollution from the plant – nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and ammonia – means for a large and globally significant collection of rock art across what is known as the Murujuga cultural landscape.
On this, there are outstanding questions, both on the evidence and the process.
There are more than 1m petroglyphs in the area, some nearly 50,000 years old and including the oldest known depictions of a human face. The WA government has had access to an 800-page rock art monitoring report since last year. For reasons that haven’t been explained, it chose not to release it until last Friday afternoon, in the “take out the trash” period before the weekend and just days before Watt planned to announce his decision.
A summary of the report released by the government and the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, a body established by the WA government to represent traditional owners, suggested there was little to worry about. It said there had been damage to some rock, probably due to inflated industrial emissions from a power plant in the 1970s, but levels of key pollutants had declined since 2014, and there was no evidence that acid rain was affecting the art.
Given the time constraints on Friday, this was initially reported in news media with the sort of headlines you might expect – that the report was a “boost” for the North West Shelf and “paving the way” for the extension to go ahead.
But those who took the time over the weekend to read the full report say this is not so clear-cut, and that there are discrepancies between what it says and the summary released to the media by the WA government.
Benjamin Smith, a professor of archaeology and world rock art expert at the University of Western Australia, says the science behind the monitoring report is good, but the data has been badly misinterpreted.
He says nobody is denying pollution degrades rock and damages ancient art. Research conducted for the monitoring report in which five different rock types were put in a weathering chamber and submitted to Murujuga-level pollution demonstrated this was the case. But the report pulls up short of declaring that pollution levels near the plant are high, and that these pollutants damage all rock types in the area.
Smith says an accurate reading of tables deep within the scientific report – on page 633 – show that local pollution is now about four times worse than in the 1960s and 1970s, before the gas processing facility was built. “But somehow we’re supposed to believe that the 60s and 70s are the problem,” he says.
He says this is backed up by other evidence. Researchers have rock collected near the site in 1994 that does not have the porosity – holes on the surface indicating significant damage from pollutants – that has developed over the past 30 years.
Smith argues there is only one logical conclusion. “The spin around it has been wrong,” he says. “If we allow what is happening to continue we’re going to very quickly lose the rock art in Murujuga.”
It means the conditions placed on an approved North West Shelf extension will be crucial. Given gas will be needed for some time yet, Smith believes it would be reasonable to allow a shorter extension that does not go beyond 2050.
And he says, rather than just give the industry what it wants, Woodside should be required to power the site with renewable energy, not gas-fired electricity. It could quickly cut local pollution levels and limit the damage to rock art.
With the clock ticking, he has offered to meet with Watt to discuss what he believes the data actually shows. “This is a test of political leadership,” Smith says. “A wise politician could still come out with a good outcome.”
