Wed 5/28/2025 2:56 PM
Australia’s new federal Environment Minister Murray Watt has said he intends to approve a forty-year extension to Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project, with his first significant decision set to fuel almost four billion tonnes of greenhouse gas.
Environment Centre of Central Queensland president Christine Carlisle says:
"This is a real climate bomb. It’s an act of willful environmental vandalism and a betrayal of future generations.”
“We’re devastated that our new Environment Minister’s first big move will be to sign off on forty more years of fossil fuels. Senator Watt has just told Australians that protecting our climate and our iconic wildlife isn’t his job.”
“This project will fuel climate chaos for decades.”
Senator Watt's intention to approve comes quickly after his decision last week to refuse to act on a legal request from volunteer community group Environment Council of Central Queensland (ECoCeQ), which asked the Minister to properly assess the climate impacts of the North West Shelf extension on thousands of nationally significant species, places and ecological communities. Represented by Environmental Justice Australia, ECoCeQ also ran a related series of landmark court cases, known as the Living Wonders climate cases.
Fossil fuel giant Woodside now has the green light to extend its North West Shelf project so it can keep processing gas and liquified fossil gas for export until 2070, instead of closing in 2030 as planned.
Today, Senator Watts indicated that he proposes to approve the project extension with conditions relating to air pollution, and Woodside has ten days to respond.
Woodside’s North West Shelf
Situated in the northwest of Western Australia in the Pilbara, near the city of Karratha, the energy giant’s offshore North West Shelf is already Australia’s largest gas project. The existing project includes key processing, storage and offloading facilities.
During the election, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vetoed the government’s “nature positive” legislation after pressure from an alarmed oil and gas resources sector in Western Australia.
But what about the safeguard mechanism?
By far the biggest climate impact of the North West Shelf will happen when the gas it produces is burned. While the NWS extension will be covered by the Safeguard Mechanism, this only relates to the emissions produced at the project site – a tiny fraction of the overall carbon footprint.
Also, although the safeguard mechanism is the Australian Government’s main policy for reducing industrial emissions, it doesn’t prevent companies from creating greenhouse gas pollution. In effect, companies can keep polluting, they just have to buy carbon credits – for example from tree planting projects - to reduce their “net emissions” on paper.
The issue is that carbon credits are not a valid compensation for fossil fuel emissions.
When fossil fuels are extracted and burned, they release greenhouse gases that have been trapped for billions of years. Trees can only store carbon for a couple of hundreds of years, at most. So, the amount of climate-warming pollution created by gas projects, mines and other facilities covered by the safeguard mechanism will – with the way the system currently works – continue to increase.
The climate reality
The world’s scientists and the International Energy Agency say to keep global heating to safer levels there can be no new coal and gas. Pacific leaders are also demanding Australia stop approving new coal and gas to give their low-lying islands a fighting chance.
MEDIA CONTACT: Miki Perkins
03 8341 3110, [email protected]
Environmental Justice Australia is a national public interest legal organisation. For more than 30 years, EJA has used the law for safe climate, thriving nature, environmental justice and a radically better world.
