A few weeks ago new Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt announced the approval of fossil fuel giant Woodside’s North West Gas extension giving it permission to operate until 2070. This decision, which the Minister claims contains strong conditions, has been condemned by environmentalists and First Nations people but unsurprisingly welcomed by Woodside and the Western Australian (WA) Government.
Opposed by First Nations peoples for years, the North West Shelf gas project has been operating since the 1980s. Gas extracted off the Pilbarra Coast is processed at Woodside’s plant at Karratha on the Burrup Peninsula. Burrup (Murujaga) is also the location of around 500,000 ancient First Nations carvings or petroglyths. This ancient art is of such significance that in 2023 former Environment Minister Plibersek applied to have it listed as a World Heritage site. The United Nations' Heritage Committee recently flagged concerns over the ongoing effects of degrading acidic emissions from the Karratha processing plant on the fragile carvings and the need to prevent any further industrial development.
Minister Watt did not have to consider climate impacts of Woodside's extension but what damage it might do to the rock art as well as economic and social matters. His conditions largely focus on air emissions from the project. For decades processing plant gases such as nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and ammonia have been gradually eroding the petroglyths without any effective state or federal government action to protect them. Whether Minister Watt’s “strong conditions” will actually work, even if they are effectively monitored and enforced, is open to question.
Environmentalists oppose the extension because of the huge emissions the project will create over its increased lifetime. As well as undermining Australia's drive to lower emissions, it threatens the nation’s climate credibility at a time when it is seeking endorsement to co-host the UN COP31 climate talks in 2026. Any claims by uninformed politicians and others that this extension could lead to nationally cheaper domestic gas supplies or to improved gas supply on the East Coast are nonsensical as only WA will see increased supply.
The only certainty is legal action and increased campaigning against the folly of continuing to allow expansion of fossil fuel projects.
- Leonie Blain
Adapted from an article originally published under the title "Heritage Destruction and Climate Folly" in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent ,4 June, 2025.
