Woodside's environmental plan for $12b project ‘corporate puffery', court told

Sydney Morning Herald

14-07-2025

Woodside's environmental plan for its Scarborough gas project is 'meaningless corporate puffery', according to lawyers for a group of doctors challenging the plan's approval.
They also say Woodside's submissions to court misinterpret the Australian offshore regulator NOPSEMA's reasons for granting the approval.
The Federal Court of Australia in Melbourne on Monday began hearings into Doctors for the Environment Australia's legal challenge to the $12 billion project, part of the company's Burrup Hub plan.
It involves tapping the field off Western Australia's north-west coast and running the gas through a 430-kilometre pipeline to its onshore Pluto plant.
The Environmental Defenders Office's Chris Young, KC, argued on behalf of the doctors' group that Woodside's court submission misinterpreted NOPSEMA's reasons for approval in suggesting the regulator considered Scarborough's projected emissions negligible to its assessment.
Woodside's environmental plan estimates Scarborough's total emissions across its life would be 878 million tonnes, equalling 0.37 per cent of the world's remaining carbon budget for a 1.5-degree warming scenario, and that its emissions within Australia would make up 0.9 per cent of Australia's remaining emissions budget to 2030.
Young told Judge Shaun McElwaine Woodside's environmental plan contained statements to the effect that emissions associated with Scarborough could not be linked to climate change impacts to the environment.
'NOPSEMA has not accepted this claim previously,' he said, citing a letter from the regulator to Woodside stating such a view was 'unsupported', especially given Woodside's ability to calculate Scarborough's expected emissions as a 'clear and measurable contribution' to Australia's total.
'The environmental plan should establish the context of Scarborough emissions, established emissions budgets, and clearly acknowledge the linear relationship between emissions and global warming,' the letter had said.