Comment

Greg Bourne
The real reason for the North West Shelf project

The polluting impact of fossil fuels is not new to those who peddle them.

Nearly 30 years ago, when I was an executive at BP, we acknowledged climate change and what it would bring – despite others in the industry crying foul. We knew then what many fossil fuel companies still pretend not to: burning coal, oil and gas would overheat our planet and fuel more extreme, more destructive weather.

Since then, I’ve watched many Australian governments delay, deny and duck responsibility when it comes to acting on climate change. This came to a head during the “lost decade” for climate action under Liberal–National governments from 2013 to 2022, by which point Australians had had enough and voted for change.

At the 2022 “climate election”, they handed Labor a mandate to take climate change seriously and shepherd Australia through a transition to renewable energy. Just last month, they reaffirmed that mandate – voting for the Albanese government to go further and faster in cutting climate pollution.

Now, just weeks into its second term, that government has betrayed its election mandate by making its most polluting decision yet: approving the Woodside Energy-operated North West Shelf extension to 2070.

In many people’s view this is a case of capitulation from a government that is beholden to fossil fuel corporations including Western Australia’s gas giants. To me, it’s climate self-sabotage.

This decision unleashes a carbon bomb. Over 45 years, this project alone will emit the equivalent of a decade of this country’s annual climate pollution. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Western Australian Premier Roger Cook will be centenarians by the time the North West Shelf wheezes its last. It will be the dirtiest fossil fuel project Australia has approved since 2014, resulting in more climate pollution than any project green-lit by the previous Coalition governments.

And yet it was waved through with barely a mention of the climate damage it will cause – because our environment laws still don’t require decision-makers to consider that pollution. The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is silent on climate, even though the impacts are already harming Australians in the form of worsening bushfires, floods and drought. Reforming this law to include climate considerations should have been at the top of the agenda for Murray Watt, the newly minted environment minister – not rubberstamping a carbon bomb.

Fossil fuel corporations have been facing an existential crisis since climate science exposed their industry. They’ve been ducking and weaving ever since.

Their latest tactic is to blame the pace of the energy switch, while conveniently ignoring their own culpability.

In late February, BP chief executive Murray Auchincloss announced a “strategic retreat” from renewables to refocus on oil and gas. “Our optimism for a fast [energy] transition was misplaced,” he admitted. “We went too far, too fast.”

Last week, Woodside Energy’s chief executive Meg O’Neill told reporters: “We need to manage the pace of the energy transition. The renewables rollout is not going as fast as had been initially anticipated.”

What they’re not saying is this: their companies are actively expanding and marketing fossil fuels because slowing the switch to renewable energy means more profits, for longer. Their long-term oil and gas strategies pay off only if decarbonisation is delayed.

Luckily for them, the Australian government continues to push fossil fuels with the zeal of a drug lord. They brush aside resistance at the supply end, weaken resolve at the demand end, and keep state and territory governments hooked on the money.

Woodside’s motives are clear: keep their shareholders happy. But what’s the government’s excuse? More than 80 per cent of Australia’s gas is exported, most of it royalty-free. Japan, our largest buyer, sells more gas to other countries than it imports from Australia.

The biggest domestic user of Australian gas is the gas industry itself, powering facilities that exist only to serve offshore markets. This isn’t just wasteful – it’s unfair. Australians don’t see the benefits but we bear the climate costs. Despite employing relatively few people and paying little tax, the gas industry holds an unhealthy level of control over government decision-making. It’s undemocratic. Policy is being written for the benefit of gas gougers, not Australians.

Meanwhile, this decision to extend the North West Shelf undermines Australia’s climate credibility on the global stage and it tarnishes our bid to host next year’s United Nations Climate Conference (COP31). A climate saboteur has no business hosting a climate summit.

Our Pacific neighbours will see this decision for exactly what it is: a dangerous step backwards. Vanuatu’s minister for climate change, Ralph Regenvanu, said the extension of the project is “a slap in the face for Pacific Island countries who have repeatedly called on Australia to stop approving new fossil fuel projects”. If Australia wants to host COP31 in partnership with the Pacific, we need their full support.

The prime minister has just months to prove he’s serious. If the Labor government wants to salvage its credibility – and its COP bid – it must move urgently to halt new fossil fuel approvals and ensure that climate impacts are assessed when it comes to fossil fuel proposals. Yes, the government has taken steps forward on climate change, far more than the Coalition ever did. But that was the overdue catch-up – now is the moment to get serious and accelerate.

UNESCO has already warned that industrial emissions from the North West Shelf gas facility are damaging Murujuga’s 50,000-year-old Indigenous rock art. That should give anyone pause. Instead, it was treated as just another “blockage” to be cleared for Woodside’s benefit.

Let’s be honest about what this decision enables – it paves the way for one of the most dangerous gas field developments in Australia’s history: Browse. Without extending the operating life of the North West Shelf gas processing facility, Woodside’s plan to plunder the Browse gas field can’t proceed. And they know it. That’s why they’re pushing this project through, door by door, approval by approval.

This decision is a prelude to more drilling, more exports and more climate chaos.

Somehow the government thinks it can pour billions of tonnes of pollution into the atmosphere without consequence. It’s mistaken. The consequences are already here. While the government waved through this pollution bomb, families in New South Wales were mopping up from record-breaking floods. South Australian and Victorian farmers were watching their crops shrivel under drought. These aren’t future scenarios, they’re unfolding right now.

Australians are being told we must cut climate pollution, tighten our belts and do our bit. Somehow that doesn’t apply to the fossil fuel industry. Gas is not a clean energy source. It’s polluting, expensive and inequitable. The government’s own Future Gas Strategy admits that gas prices will continue to rise. So Australians are paying more for an energy source that’s hurting our climate, enriching gas giants and delivering next to nothing for homes and businesses.

Prime Minister Albanese says Australia is aiming for “net zero, not zero” – but that’s spin. Offsetting millions of tonnes of climate pollution with unverifiable credits isn’t leadership; it’s climate buck-passing. No offset can undo the damage of opening the floodgates on four billion tonnes of pollution. Under no circumstances should heavy-polluting corporations be allowed to hide their industrial emissions using questionable land-based offsets. It’s a loophole, not a solution.

The government’s safeguard mechanism is meant to drive down industrial pollution, but is limited in its purview. While the government talks up this regulation and its climate credentials, the mechanism only considers onsite emissions, ignoring the far greater damage caused by burning this gas overseas. On paper, this pollution might be accounted for via offsets or pushed aside as some other country’s responsibility. But climate change doesn’t care about borders. It is Australians that will pay a severe price for such decisions.

The economics don’t stack up either. The world is heading for an oversupply of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Demand is flattening. Australia is betting on a market that will go bust in the not-to-distant future. The cynical calculation that Woodside makes is that global inaction will keep their profits flowing. The economic cost of emissions will exceed $1.2 trillion – more than triple the project’s estimated contribution to gross domestic product. This is public risk for private reward. Australians are left footing the climate bill, while Woodside reaps the profits.

Our leaders should be focused on building clean industries of the future. We have the talent but our engineers, tradespeople and skilled workers are being diverted into projects that prop up a declining industry, rather than building the industries we so desperately need. Projects like this soak up the expertise and capital that should be powering Australia forward. This is not a national investment. It’s a climate and economic liability.

It’s not too late for the prime minister to show leadership. Australians voted for climate action, not climate vandalism. Albanese needs to lead like our future depends on it – because it does.

The government must stop approving new fossil fuel projects. It must fix our broken environment laws. It must face down the lobbyists and stand with Australians, not the polluters. If it doesn’t, voters will turn their backs on this government, just as they did with the Coalition. And future generations may never forgive our leaders for the harm they caused.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on June 7, 2025 as "The real reason for the North West Shelf project".

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