2026-07-24

The battle against Australia’s largest new fossil fuel project

By Sophie McNeill, Greens WA MLC

Woodside’s attempt to develop the Browse gas field on top of Scott Reef off Western Australia’s Kimberley Coast represents a climate and environmental disaster for our entire country and beyond.

It’s a project that will only exist for one reason: Woodside’s profit.

Woodside is absolutely gunning to get Browse approved, which if successful would be the largest new gas field in the Southern Hemisphere and would result in 1.6 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by 2070.¹

Worse still, the fossil fuel giant wants to drill directly under the pristine Scott Reef and right in the middle of an important feeding ground for migratory marine life and endangered species, including the pygmy blue whale. Sandy Islet, located within Scott Reef, is also an important breeding ground for a genetically distinct population of green sea turtles.²

Under Woodside’s proposed plan, they would build a 900km pipeline through the ocean to their gas processing plant in Karratha, WA, risking a devastating oil spill across several marine parks.

The Karratha gas plant is also literally right next to the at least 40,000-year-old Murujuga First Nations ancient rock art, which includes the oldest known depiction of the human face. Browse will further damage the sacred petroglyphs, which are already being corroded by emissions.³

Last year, my state colleague Brad Pettitt and I visited Murujuga with Greens leader Larissa Waters and Victorian Senator Steph Hodgins-May to witness firsthand the proximity of this precious rock art to the constant destructive emissions from the Karratha gas plant.

It’s a stunning, sacred place and we simply cannot let this rock art be exposed to further emissions from Woodside’s Browse project.

Fortunately, thanks to the work of our friends at the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), we have just had the first opportunity in eight years to submit a public comment to the Federal Environment Minister, Murray Watt. This was triggered by ACF providing new evidence that showed that the climate pollution from this project would have unacceptable impacts on places of national significance like the Great Barrier Reef.

Research from IPCC lead author, Professor Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, found that emissions from Browse would result in the death of an additional 29.35 million individual coral colonies in every future mass bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef.⁴

Huge thanks to the thousands of you who either wrote your own submission, or added your name to the Greens’ submission. This was a really important opportunity for us to collectively influence the government’s imminent decision on this project.

There is a growing movement of people across the country who care about preserving our precious places and understand the absolute rort that the gas industry is pulling on the Australian public.

After decades of governments that have refused to act in our interests and the interest of the environment, people are increasingly fed up.

It couldn’t be more obvious that we are being taken for a ride by the fossil fuel industry. Daily life gets harder, but the profits that these companies rake in from climate-destroying projects skyrocket.

With both WA state and federal government approvals on the horizon, this is an incredibly important time to get active and support the campaign against this horrific gas project. This is a project that will have irreversible impacts across the entire country for many decades.

Our only opportunity to stop it is right now.

We need a huge, vocal movement of people across the country calling on the federal and WA governments to reject this project. We know that one of the only things that impact political decisions is the risk that these decisions pose to political careers.

The gas lobby is already embedded in the halls of parliament and the only reason this project will go ahead is because of the profits that Woodside can wring out of it by getting the gas for free.⁵ These are the same companies that lobbied against the national gas tax.

They only care about lining their own pockets – not providing a benefit to the community, and definitely not protecting our precious environment.

There is so much at stake - please, tell your friends, family, neighbours and colleagues to join us in this important battle.

Join the campaign

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