In the time-honoured Australian tradition, a crucial government decision with national and international implications is about to be made while most of us are distracted by the silly season.
Recently the Western Australian minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Action, Labor’s Reece Whitby, gave Woodside Energy a fifty year extension to its mega-polluting LNG operation on the North West Shelf.
Mr Whitby’s job is theoretically ‘to coordinate the state’s response to climate change while establishing a whole-of-government approach to reduce emissions.’ Being in WA though, his actual job is to do whatever the fossil billionaires want.
Woodside’s approval was delayed by a record 770 appeals from conservations, scientific experts and traditional owners. WA’s version of the EPA said the approval could only be granted if there was mitigation of the greenhouse gas emissions, so the WA government stripped the EPA of its power to regulate emissions. There, problem solved.
What Woodside wants for Christmas is a green light from the federal government to make megabucks from the North West Shelf for the next 50 years. Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has 30 business days from the state’s approval to make her decision.
One problem is that this single project is projected to emit at least 14 times Australia’s annual CO2 emissions over the life of the scheme – more than 6 billion tonnes of the stuff. In other words, it’s a carbon bomb with the potential to shred national emissions reduction targets and hasten the extinction of humans, along with many other entirely innocent species.
Another problem is that Woodside’s expansion, which includes its planned Browse LNG project off WA’s north coast, is already destroying some of the most significant rock art in the world, on the Burrup Peninsula, including the earliest known depiction of a human face at the World Heritage nominated Murujuga site.
The art here is five times as old as the pyramids and eight times older than Stonehenge.
If it was anywhere but Australia, there would be bulletproof glass, a gift shop and the whole place would be surrounded by armed guards, but here it’s being eroded by chemical emissions from the neighbouring industrial facility while the traditional owners despair.
But that’s not all
Off the coast, Woodside is intending to drill up to fifty wells around Scott Reef, described by conservationists as the jewel in the crown of WA’s Kimberley coast and one of the last truly wild places left in Australia.
Despite the best efforts of Tim Winton, John Butler and others, most Australians have never heard of Scott Reef, which is exactly how Woodside likes it, but this is a crucial part of an ocean ecosystem which supports over 1,500 species, including reef-building corals, a myriad of fish species, and migratory whales, including the endangered pygmy blue whale.
The rationale for all this destruction is the usual nonsense about gas being a ‘smoothing fuel’, as WA Premier Roger Cook put it. Sounds almost cuddly, doesn’t it? Supposedly gas is less climate-polluting than the coal alternative, never mind the methane emissions and all the havoc associated with its extraction and transport.
Actually, CSIRO research shows that West Australian gas is displacing renewable energy in Asia, with coal being unaffected.
So what will Tanya do?
Channelling Sir Humphrey Appleby, a spokesperson for Minister Plibersek’s department said, ‘As the minister is the decision-maker for this project and the statutory decision-making time frame has now commenced it would be inappropriate to provide any further comment until a decision on the proposal has been made.’
Woodside has a long history of rolling over its opposition, in Australia and overseas. The company has been investigated by the AFP for allegations of bribery and corruption in Mauritania, it avoided rig decommissioning costs by calling dumped plastic and other waste an artificial reef, and it has been accused of making deceptive public statements in order to get free carbon permits.
The company concealed a large oil spill off the coast of WA in 2016, it led the lobbying effort to force the WA EPA to abandon new guidelines to protect the climate, and in 2004 it was involved in the illegal wiretapping of the East Timor government in a plan to transfer the wealth of one of the poorest countries in the world to its own shareholders.
After a long and historic battle, in which Bob Brown was prominently involved, the company’s proposal to build the James Price Point gas complex, also in the Kimberley, was stopped in 2013.
Federally, though, Woodside tends to get whatever it wants, no matter who is nominally in power. Albanese needs Western Australia, where Woodside runs the show, and Labor has proven itself an entity friendly to the company. For example, Woodside executive and supposed inventor of the democracy sausage, Gary Gray, went through the revolving door into the Rudd and Gillard governments and then became the ambassador to Ireland.
Alas, WA’s unique environment lacks any voice in government, least of all its environment minister. If Tanya Plibersek gives Woodside what it wants on the North West Shelf for the next fifty years, the capitulation will be complete.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
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