‘We’ve had one policy; we landed it, a 2030 target of 43 per cent, net zero by 2050, both of them legislated’, said Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, on 10 June, 2024.
Albanese was discussing Peter Dutton and the Coalition’s rejection of the Paris Agreement and the net zero by 2050 policy. Australia’s 43 per cent emissions reduction target for 2030 and net zero by 2050 target were legislated in 2022. So why, two years on, are we seeing companies like Woodside, who were supposed to shut down this decade, get renewed until 2070, going against prior climate promises, and our government is allowing it?
Woodside was founded in Victoria in 1954. By 1963, it obtained an exploration permit for what is now the North West Shelf (NWS), off the northwest coast of Western Australia. The NWS has since become one of Australia’s major gas export projects, with Woodside operating the Karratha gas plant. As of September 2025, the federal Environment and Water Minister, Murray Watt, approved the extension of the NWS gas processing facilities until 2070. This means the project could continue operating for another 40 years beyond its previous timeframe.
Inappropriate closeness
The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) challenged Watt’s decision in the Federal Court, arguing among other things that the government had failed to consider the climate impacts properly and questioned the relationship between Woodside and the government, after around 200 texts and emails between government officials and Woodside were shown in court. The ACF argued that the extent of communication created an inappropriate closeness between the company and the government.
Raising the question: why is the government communicating so extensively with a company they’re supposed to be regulating? And are they putting Woodside’s economic interests above environmental preservation, despite committing to net zero by 2050 targets?
Favourable conditions
Greenpeace and other environmental groups argue that Woodside was trying to ‘water down’ the conditions and regulations attached to this project. Woodside and the government have rejected the claims that the company improperly influenced the approval process, with Watt stating the decision was made in accordance with the law.
Although the environmental requirements were weakened, this does not prove Woodside controlled the government’s decision; however, we cannot rule out that changes were made on their behalf.
Failure to deliver
Concerns about the climate implications of Woodside’s facilities aren’t new, and in response to these concerns and to align with Australia’s climate commitments, Woodside announced in December 2021 that it would contribute $US5 billion (around AUD$7 billion) to new energy projects and lower-carbon services by 2030. This commitment was intended to demonstrate Woodside’s commitment to more carbon-neutral energy alternatives, including hydrogen and ammonia. By August 2026, however, Woodside has retired this target after only spending $335 million towards it. This came after Greenpeace, a climate group, took Woodside to court, claiming some of its climate promises were misleading and deceptive. The case was settled in April 2026 after Woodside changed aspects of how it described its climate strategy, later removing their 2030 commitments from their website. This failure to invest in the preservation of Australia’s ecosystems has caused outrage across the country among environmental groups and individuals.
But what’s going to happen from here? The Conservation Council of WA has come after Woodside’s ‘grossly negligent’ failure to meet clean energy commitments. These criticisms are also being made in a wider political debate. Greens representatives in WA have continuously criticised both Woodside’s fossil fuel expansion and the government’s decisions surrounding the NWS.
This issue isn’t as simple as ‘Woodside good’, or ‘Woodside bad’, but whether the Australian government can continue to support Woodside’s economic interests while standing by and watching the destruction of local ecosystems and acting against international climate commitments.
♦ Veronica Lyon is currently majoring in global politics at RMIT University, Melbourne.
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