Woodside Energy’s North West Shelf extension has been approved, and here’s the eight things you need to know

An application to extend the life of Woodside Energy’s North West Shelf LNG plant has been endorsed by Australia’s new Environment Minister Murray Watt. The company will have 10 days to respond before the project is approved. Here’s what you need to know about the project and its history. What is the North West Shelf? It was the first project built to process Australian gas into LNG for export to overseas buyers, launching an industry which earns about $30 billion for the State every year. The NWS Karratha Gas Plant has been a critical WA energy asset for four decades, supplying the local market with gas used for manufacturing and electricity. What is the extension plan? Woodside and its partners want to run the Karratha plant until 2070. That’s a key step towards the energy giant’s $30b Browse project off the Kimberley coast, which would pipe gas 900km to Karratha for processing. Gas from Browse, however, would not be enough to fill the plant for the next 45 years, so Woodside is chasing deals to bring other gas fields online. Why has it been so controversial? Life-cycle emissions from the gas would be more than 80 million tonnes of CO2 annually. It is hotly contested because of the impact on climate change, but backers say it will help Asian customers decarbonise by replacing coal power. Next door to the plant is the ancient Murujuga Rock Art, estimated to be between 4000 and 30,000 years old. A fresh report by scientists released last week found the plant’s emissions were not impacting the rock art, but warned historical pollution likely had an effect. Yet a draft decision by UNESCO released today warned it would be knocked back for a world-heritage listing because of concerns about emissions. Mr Watt said he had “ensured that adequate protection for the rock art is central to my proposed decision”. Why did a decision on NWS take so long? Woodside lodged environmental applications in 2018 but the State Government’s decision took more than six years. The severe delays reflected WA’s slow approvals system, a record number of appeals, the project’s complexity, and Woodside pausing progress when COVID struck. What did WA’s environment regulator assess? Carbon emissions and the impact of pollution on water and air quality; and the effect on the Murujuga Rock Art. What did the Federal Government assess? The Feds needed to judge the impact of the project on rock art under National Heritage rules, according to environmental documents. WA’s EPA was tasked to undertake the job on their behalf as part of its assessment, published in 2022. The Federal Government needed the full rock art report from the State before finalising a decision. Was there extra scrutiny? Environmentalists wanted to trigger rules to broaden the review to include the impact of Browse and — more tenuously — fracking in the Kimberley. They said it would come under Federal provisions which require “indirect consequences” of a project to be assessed. The bid was knocked back. The LNG battle Woodside shifted focus last year to the US, with two projects on the horizon worth more than $20b combined. Analysts broadly saw it as a move to diversify, given ongoing red tape battles Down Under. Woodside chief Meg O’Neill has talked up the US approvals regime as fast and simple — even prior to the new Trump administration. Australia’s ranking as an LNG producer is expected to slide in coming decades as the US, Qatar and other countries pump up production. But the industry produces about 8 per cent of national carbon emissions — amid a global fight to reach net zero by 2050.