Given Labor has always claimed to take climate change seriously, it is shocking that one of its first priorities after the 2025 election was to approve a 50-year extension of the most climate destroying fossil project in Australia, Woodside’s North West Shelf (NWS) gas export terminal.
The emissions from the extension will be equivalent to opening 12 new coal power stations for 50 years, making a mockery of Labor’s other climate policies.
The acid gas emissions from the project risk further damage to one of Australia, and the world’s greatest cultural treasures, the Murujuga rock art on Western Australia’s Burrup Peninsula.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese justified the approval by claiming, falsely, that it is necessary to “firm” renewable energy in WA, suggesting that gas from NWS is necessary to produce electricity when wind and solar are unavailable.
This is an absurd claim.
The North West Shelf is a gas export terminal. It will divert gas away from WA, not provide more.
Some 90 per cent of Western Australia’s gas is exported, 35 times more than is used for electricity in the state.
In fact, gas export projects use more than twice as much gas just processing it for export than WA uses for electricity. Claiming that a 50-year extension of a gas export project is needed to supply more gas for WA’s electricity is simply false.
While NWS provides some gas to WA through the state’s reservation policy, a parliamentary inquiry into that policy found export projects, including Woodside, have supplied only a little over half of their 15 per cent domestic gas commitments.
Australia Institute research has also found that because Woodside’s NWS facility exports large amounts of WA’s onshore domestic gas reserves, it is likely the net net result of the extension will be less gas for Western Australia.
In 2020, the WA state Labor government caved into industry pressure and allowed Woodside to export gas reserved for domestic use via North West Shelf facility. This linked the WA domestic market to global gas prices, repeating the terrible mistake made last decade on Australia’s east coast.
Since then, WA’s wholesale gas price tripled and electricity prices soared because the state is so dependent on gas for electricity.
Meanwhile, Australians will get virtually nothing out the North West Shelf project.
No royalties will be paid on the vast bulk of the gas extracted and no gas export project in Australia has ever paid Petroleum Resource Rent Tax. Put simply, Woodside will get huge amounts of Australia’s gas for free and export it for profit.
WA motorists pay more in vehicle registration than the gas industry pays in royalties, and even this is projected to collapse as ever more of the gas feeding the North West Shelf export terminal is royalty free.
Australia Institute analysis estimates that $215 billion worth of free gas will be exported through Woodside’s project, making Labor’s approval of the extension the biggest giveaway of Australia’s resources yet.
So why would Labor make such a disastrous decision that is clearly counter to our national interest?
The answer lies in the political power of the gas industry and wider resource sector.
This power is not based on tax payments or Australian supply, but on political connections.
For example, the Woodside board includes Ben Wyatt, a former WA Labor treasurer and Ian McFarlane, a former federal Coalition resources minister.
Former Labor federal resources minister Martin Ferguson, famously took up a job with the flagship gas industry lobby group, Australian Energy Producers soon after leaving office.
Former WA Premier Mark McGowan works for mining and gas companies and, unsurprisingly, his successor Roger Cook is explicit about his advocacy for mining interests, including Woodside.
Australians should insist that the country’s leaders represent the interests of Australians, not multinational gas corporations.
That should start with the Prime Minister.
Mark Ogge is principal adviser at the Australia Institute specialising in the gas industry and the impacts of climate change
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