By Peter Milne
Western Australia’s environment watchdog is poised to recommend Woodside’s $30 billion-plus Browse gas export project not go ahead, forcing the federal government into a potential choice between environmental protection and its commitment to long-term gas supply to Australia’s trading partners.
Threats to endangered whales and turtles and the risk of an oil spill are driving the stance of the independent WA Environmental Protection Authority, a body that rarely rejects projects, instead usually giving a green light with conditions to lessen the environmental impact.
It is a setback for Woodside, which discovered the giant gas fields more than 50 years ago in the ocean off the Kimberley, where Scott Reef provides a unique oasis for marine life.
Sea fans at Scott Reef, 270 kilometres off the Kimberley coast.Credit: Alex Westover / Greenpeace
The EPA’s position was revealed by a freedom of information request from this masthead. The FOI application was rejected, but the decision referenced a February letter to Woodside titled “EPA preliminary view to the proponent that the proposal was unacceptable”.
The watchdog’s concerns included pygmy blue whales, the possible sinking below sea level of nesting areas for endangered turtles, and the threat to Scott Reef from an oil spill, according to an industry source familiar with the issues but not authorised to talk to the media.
Woodside’s proposed Browse project, which is fiercely opposed by environmental groups, would be one of the biggest oil and gas projects in the nation, but whether it can go ahead will in part depend on government approvals.
WA-based federal Resources Minister Madeleine King strongly backs the oil and gas giant’s plans to pipe “Australia’s largest untapped gas resource” 1000 kilometres to its existing gas plant near Karratha into the 2070s.
“This project is important to the future gas supply of WA, and our regional partners, as it always has been,” she told an energy conference in 2023.
With Chinese and Japanese investment and most of the gas slated for export, Browse aligns with the Future Gas Strategy King launched in May, which aims to make Australia a reliable energy supplier.
However, it is the approval of federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and her WA counterpart that Woodside needs for the project to go ahead.
The state and federal environment ministers will separately weigh the environmental advice they receive with social and economic considerations.
Plibersek, representing the environmentally aware electorate of Sydney, is subject to heavy campaigning to reject both Browse and extending the life of Woodside’s North West Shelf plant to process its gas.
Greenpeace, which has collected more than 440,000 online signatures against Browse, welcomed the EPA’s stance. Its chief executive, David Ritter, said drilling for gas near a coral reef was irredeemably dangerous.
There are concerns that noise from gas production could change the behaviour of the pygmy blue whales.Credit: Greenpeace
“Woodside’s Browse project is Australia’s biggest climate threat and will come to define Labor’s legacy on environmental protection,” he said.
A Woodside spokesman said Browse gas could help address a predicted gas shortage in WA and support energy security in Asia.
“Browse is aligned with the federal government’s Future Gas Strategy that acknowledges the pivotal role of natural gas in Australia to 2050 and beyond,” he said.
A 15 million-year survivor
At Scott Reef, which is next to proposed well sites for the massive project, coral growth over 15 million years has kept pace with rising sea levels and subsiding seabeds.
Reef ecologist Dr Ben Fitzpatrick said the result was a 700-metre tower of dead coral and marine life that helped drive deep, nutrient-rich cold water to the surface, supporting a proliferation of marine life in an otherwise featureless area.
Fitzpatrick, an adjunct research fellow of the University of WA Oceans Institute, said the reef’s survival was already threatened by climate change bleaching corals and increasing the rate of sea-level rise. Further subsidence, if vast quantities of gas were extracted from under the seabed, would add to the danger.
Particularly vulnerable is Sandy Islet, the only part of Scott Reef always above water, where more than 2000 green turtle hatchlings have been observed emerging in a single night. Fitzpatrick said even a small amount of subsidence could increase sand erosion and cause the islet, which also provides a rest stop for migratory birds, to disappear.
Fitzpatrick said Scott Reef was probably an important resting and feeding area for migrating pygmy blue whales, manta rays and whale sharks. There are concerns that noise from gas production could change the behaviour of the pygmy blue whales.
Woodside acknowledged these issues in a public submission to the EPA in late 2023 but argued it could manage them to achieve an acceptably low risk to the environment.
Sandy Islet, part of Scott Reef, is a nesting area for green sea turtles.Credit: Greenpeace
Similarly, Woodside’s modelling showed an oil spill could damage the reef but such an event was “considered highly unlikely”.
Fitzpatrick said Scott Reef was less affected by climate change than most coral reefs and it would be an injustice to see it damaged.
“It’s one of those places that really should actually get protection,” he said.
A long approval road ahead
The EPA’s concerns about Browse are substantial, according to the industry source, running to more than 10 pages with many issues described as not meeting the authority’s objectives of protecting the environment and preventing pollution.
In the letter, then EPA chair Matthew Tonts invoked the “precautionary principle” numerous times: the EPA’s legislated requirement not to let a lack of full scientific certainty postpone protection against “threats of serious or irreversible damage”.
Woodside’s plans for Browse lodged with the EPA attracted more than 20,000 public submissions in early 2020.
EPA deputy chair Lee McIntosh said Woodside did not respond to those submissions until November 2023. She said Woodside had requested more time to provide further information, and when that was received, the authority would begin drafting its report, which it expected to publish in 2025.
Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior visited the Scott Reef in 2023.Credit: Alex Westover / Greenpeace
A spokesperson for Plibersek’s department said she was waiting on more information from Woodside and the WA government.
Minutes of a May meeting between Woodside and the department revealed by a freedom of information request showed the federal government has similar interests to the EPA — “the likelihood of oil blow-outs, impacts from subsidence, and impacts to turtles and blue whale foraging”.
Conservation Council of WA director Jess Beckerling said Scott Reef was the crown jewel in WA’s marine environment.
“Woodside has been given years to bring Browse up to scratch,” she said.
“It is incumbent on the WA and federal governments to respect this independent scientific advice and refuse Woodside’s application.”
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