Government Prioritises Industry Over People: Disrupt Burrup Hub on the North West Shelf Approval

A massive protest took place outside the District Court of Western Australia last Friday, as Disrupt Burrup Hub members, Gerard Mazza, Tahlia Stolarski and Jesse Noakes, were set to be charged in relation to an April 2023 nonviolent direct action, which involved letting off stench gas and flares during Australian fossil fuel company Woodside’s annual general meeting.

Disrupt Burrup Hub has carried out countless protest actions rallying against the largest and most destructive fossil fuel project on this continent, Woodside’s Burrup Hub, since January 2023. And the key threat in regard to this gas facility over that time was the yet-to-be-made decision on whether to extend the key part of the project, the North West Shelf, up until the year 2070.

The decision to grant approval for the North West Shelf gas project to operate for another 45 years – which is akin to letting off a massive climate bomb with planetary impact – was casually made by new Albanese government environment minister Murray Watt on 28 May, just two days before the sentencing was about to take place, so the rally in support of DBH was extra packed.

Mazza, Stolarski and Noakes had their sentencing hearing adjourned, however, until this Friday, due to a last-minute sentencing deal that saw their charges downgraded. But none of their supporters considered they’d made a wasted trip to the courthouse because all gathered were well aware of the devastating consequences of the Albanese government having officially damned the climate to hell.

Uncultured dinosaurs

Watt, who likely won’t be around to see the devastation wrecked by the extension of the North West Shelf gas project in 2070, could have, however, visited the Burrup Peninsula, which is part of the Murujuga cultural landscape: the largest collection of ancient rock art on the planet, comprising of more than one million petroglyphs, some of which are considered around 50,000 years old.

Watt could have met with Mardathoonera woman Raelene Cooper, who’s long been campaigning to preserve the destruction of the Murujuga cultural landscape, which is being eroded and degraded by the acidic rain produced by Burrup Hub emissions. The new environment minister could have considered the impact upon what UNESCO considers is of world heritage value, but he didn’t bother.

In fact, Watt had the way smoothed over for him by the WA Cook government, which, after sitting on a report analysing the impact that Burrup Hub will have on Murujuga, released the report the Friday before Watt made his approval decision, and the executive summary fudged the details inside the document, so that it read as if the research supported the approval, when it doesn’t.

So, minister Watt simply sat in his airconditioned office in Canberra and in a rather uncultured manner signed off on a deal that benefits Woodside, an Australian fossil fuel company majority owned by American shareholders, with the consequences of this akin to the time Rio Tinto blew up the Juukan Gorge in 2020.

End of times activism

The crew from Disrupt Burrup Hub have put their liberty on the line on numerous occasions over the last two years, which once involved scores of police jumping a 19-year-old sole protester about to spray paint a message on the house of the CEO of Woodside back in 2023, along with a plainclothes police officer having pulled a gun on a DBH activist who was simply driving in his car.

Sydney Criminal Lawyers spoke to a Disrupt Burrup Hub spokesperson about how the trio of activists about to be sentenced this Friday are holding up, the multiple detrimental impacts that the greenlighting of the North West Shelf extension will bring, and how the Albanese government pulling this just weeks into its second term of office does not bode well for the entire planet.

Last Friday, three Disrupt Burrup Hub members were set to be sentenced after having pleaded guilty to the criminal offence of do act to create a false belief. However, at the last minute, the charges were downgraded to attempt to do act to create a false belief. And the sentencing hearing has been adjourned to this coming Friday.

So, how are those DBH members feeling about the sentencing this week? And after two and a half years of conducting direct actions and facing arrests, court hearings, adjournments, press betrayals and public backlash, how are the original members of DBH holding up these days?

The campaign is holding up just fine. There was a little action in the city this morning, where Penny Wong, the foreign minister, was walking through the CBD and a couple of activists managed to let her know in no uncertain terms how they feel about the government’s decision to approve the North West Shelf extension to 2070.

So, the protests around Woodside’s Burrup Hub have not died down in any sense.

It is notable that it has been more than two years since the action that the three Disrupt Burrup Hub members are in court for this Friday, and they still haven’t gotten a decision in relation to their sentences.

However, it only took Murray Watt two weeks, after taking the office of environment minister, to approve Woodside’s North West Shelf without even visiting the Burrup to see it for himself or to speak to any of the Traditional Custodians of the area.

You can see where the government’s priorities lie, industry over people.

But broadly speaking, DBH is kind of use to this by now. So, it will just be kind of nice for them to finally get it done this Friday.

As you’ve just mentioned on 28 May, environment minister Murray Watt approved an extension of the North West Shelf gas project until 2070. This decision was being scrutinised by the federal government for the last six years.

The North West Shelf is the key component of Woodside’s Burrup Hub project. So, this is what DBH has specifically been fighting against for the past two and a half years.

The North West Shelf is described as Australia’s biggest fossil fuel project. But can you give us a bit more of an idea of what the North West Shelf project entails? And what the extension of it for another 45 years means both locally and globally?

Essentially, the North West Shelf is the biggest and dirtiest part of Woodside’s Burrup Hub expansion. It will push out emissions from this project until 2070.

It will blow out any chance of Australia meeting its international obligations. It will entail a total of 6 billion tonnes of carbon pollution over that period.

It will also seriously endanger and desecrate the oldest, largest collection of First Nations rock art on Earth: the Murujuga cultural landscape.

I know that Mardathoonera woman Raelene Cooper is best placed to answer questions about the Murujuga rock art and DBH is in regular contact with her.

But I’ll put the question to you, as you say, Murujuga is one of the largest and oldest collections of human culture on the planet, so what is at stake here?

Moments before Murray Watt’s decision to approve the North West Shelf last week, UNESCO, the world body charged with protecting sites of outstanding universal heritage value, published its draft decision on Murujuga.

UNESCO said it can’t approve Murujuga for world heritage status, not because it doesn’t have outstanding heritage value, in fact, it acknowledges the site does hold that.

But the decision is because there are insufficient protections in place from the impacts of acidic emissions on the rocks, and the North West Shelf was specifically identified as the primary source of those industrial impacts.

So, UNESCO said that until the Australian government removed all emissions from Murujuga, they would be unable to approve world heritage status.

But not only does this project threaten climate and culture, but it also jeopardises Australia’s largest offshore coral reef, Scott Reef, which is where Woodside intends to drill 50 gas wells through the Browse Basin and pipe it 900 kilometres along the sea floor to the Burrup Hub, to the North West Shelf, for export overseas.

The Scott Reef is home to a number of endangered species including sea snakes that are found nowhere else on Earth and genetically distinct sea turtles that nest on a tiny strip of sand that is at risk of subsiding into the ocean if Woodside extracts the gas from underneath it, as it plans to.

Woodside is also responsible, within the past week, for an oil spill off the northwest coast of WA that spilt 16,000 litres of oil into the ocean. If they did that at Scott Reef, it would potentially wipe out that reef and all the marine species that rely on it.

And it is worth emphasising, finally, that all of this gas and destruction is entirely so Woodside can export liquified natural gas overseas to offshore markets.

This is not destined for domestic energy supply here in Australia. It will not keep the lights on at home.

The North West Shelf is an export facility: that means it takes WA’s gas and sends it overseas with almost zero return for ordinary Australians and multibillion dollar profits for Australia’s largest oil and gas multinational Woodside.

So, on those four fronts, climate, cultural heritage, environment and cost-of-living, the North West Shelf is extremely bad news for Australia and our national interest.

The only people this is good for are the oil and gas multinationals.

As you say, Woodside is Australia’s largest oil and gas producer. However, it’s majority owned by US shareholders, about 55 percent of it is, while Australian investors hold only about 20 percent of its shares. So, North West Shelf profits mostly go offshore.

The authorities are raising the fact that the Burrup Hub provides WA with about 14 percent of the power the state uses. But as you’ve just said, that means that the rest of what is extracted ends up overseas.

The fact that much of the profits made and the gas extracted is being sent overseas would surprise many in this country. But there is more to it, when you look at the fact that Woodside pays next to nothing for the gas it extracts or any taxes in that regard.

This set of circumstances is replicated at many gas extraction projects across this continent. So, can you given us a rundown on how this arrangement works?

Essentially, almost all of the gas that is exported from Australia is sent overseas without any royalties being paid on it. So, the majority of Australian gas exported overseas sees no royalties paid to ordinary Australians.

The vast majority of our gas is exported overseas in that fashion. So, very little gas that is extracted in Australia keeps the lights on at home or contributes to our energy security but instead, it is sent overseas, where Australians see almost no returns and all it does is fuel further climate disasters whilst it is being burnt overseas.

The Australian government then gets to wash its hands of any responsibility for the climate emissions and Woodside gets to clean up the profits.

And lastly, what does Watt making this decision at this early point in the new Albanese government’s term mean for the rest of it? And how is Disrupt Burrup Hub planning on reacting to these developments?

Above all what it tells us is the Albanese government has completely abandoned any mandate for climate action, and any mandate for Indigenous justice or reconciliation with First Nations peoples.

They’re proposing to expand Australia’s largest fossil fuel project on top of Australia’s most important cultural heritage site. This is in the face of condemnation and coverup claims coming from international rock art exports, Traditional Custodians and from the UN itself.

There is a clear indication that with their new majority, the Albanese Labor government has completely abandoned any pretence to be representing the community who voted for them on the basis of demanding climate action and reconciliation and restitution for Indigenous people.

Instead, the Albanese government has shown that their priority is appeasing multinational companies and the big end of town and their vested interests within the media and within industry.

Labor has demonstrated, even more than Peter Dutton and the Liberal Party, that it will be approving fossil fuel projects as quick as they can.

During the election, Dutton promised to approve the North West Shelf within 30 days of taking office. He was decisively rejected by the Australian people – he lost his own seat.

And yet, within two weeks of Murray Watt being environment minister, he has rushed through an approval for the North West Shelf in the face of overwhelming criticism from the people whose country this is, from the experts who know about the impact of the project and from international bodies charged with protecting our environment.

So, that kind of tells you everything you need to know about the Albanese government’s priorities.

The only response is to get active and get mobilised and Disrupt Burrup Hub and many of the other groups will be doing that over the next three years.

You can’t trust Labor. They have responded to the endorsement from the Australian people by immediately betraying them, immediately disappointing them and immediately letting them down.

At least Labor did it quickly this time. It didn’t take them three years. It took two weeks for Albanese to show precisely where his loyalties lie, and it is a massive betrayal of everyday Australians.

So, I would expect that there will be a massive response in reaction to that, not just at the ballot box in three years, but on the streets, in the press and everywhere else, in the interim.