Western Australia’s Environment Minister has given approval for a key component of oil and gas giant Woodside’s proposed $16 billion Scarborough LNG development to go ahead.
Key points:
- The Scarborough gas field sits about 375 kilometres off the WA coast
- Woodside plans to pump gas through an underwater pipeline back to shore
- A small portion of the pipeline sits on state land, and has been approved
Woodside is proposing to develop the offshore Scarborough gas field, approximately 375km west-north-west of the Burrup Peninsula, north of Karratha, and start producing gas between 2023 and 2025.
It plans to pump the gas through an underwater pipeline connecting the gas field to Woodside’s Pluto LNG facility on the Burrup Peninsula to process the gas for export.
The majority of the pipeline runs in Commonwealth waters, but 32.7 kilometres is in state waters.
The state’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has given approval for Woodside, as operator of the joint venture, to build that “nearshore” section in state waters to link to the Pluto facility.
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)The document is signed by Environment Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for Ms Sanderson said the approval was subject to a range of conditions.
The conditions included: Environmental management plans to minimise and monitor impact on marine fauna and coral; a comprehensive cultural heritage management plan, and; that the pipeline must be built parallel and close to an existing pipeline.
“The proposal was subject to multiple public consultation periods by the EPA including a month-long period at the Environmental Review Document stage during 2019,” the spokeswoman said.
Woodside is due to make a final investment decision later this year.
Approval a ‘regulatory milestone’: Woodside
In a statement, Woodside Acting chief executive Meg O’Neill said the approval was an “important regulatory milestone”.
“We now have both Commonwealth and state primary environmental approvals in place to support a final investment decision for the Scarborough development,” she said.
“Scarborough gas contains negligible reservoir carbon dioxide.
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)“Combined with the adoption of best available proven technology in design at Pluto Train 2, these developments will be amongst the lowest-carbon LNG sources globally for Woodside’s North Asian customers.”
Ms O’Neill said “extensive stakeholder consultation” had been completed on the nearshore proposal, including a four-week public review of the draft Dredging and Spoil Disposal Management Plan.
She said extraction and processing of the Scarborough field gas in Commonwealth waters was assessed separately and was accepted by the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority in March 2020.
Conservation Council slams approval
The Conservation Council of WA (CCWA) slammed the nearshore pipeline approval, saying it would accelerate climate change, damage the richest area of marine biodiversity in the state and harm unique cultural heritage.
It pointed out the approval comes just days after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a “code red” warning that the use of coal, oil and gas would have to be dramatically reduced to prevent the most damaging impacts of climate change.
“The nearshore pipeline project involves blasting and dredging kilometers of seabed and dumping millions of tons of crushed coral and rock within the Dampier Archipelago — the richest area of marine biodiversity in Western Australia,” CCWA executive director Piers Verstegen said.
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)“An independent technical review of the project found that the construction of the pipeline poses a high risk of injury and death to protected marine life including turtles, dolphins, and dugongs.
“The pipeline operations also risk severe impacts on migrating humpback whales.”
He said appeals against the pipeline approval had also raised concerns about impacts on submerged cultural heritage including rock art created thousands of years ago when sea levels were lower.
