Green battle looms for $US12bn Scarborough

The Supreme Court has set a December date to hear a challenge to environmental approvals for Woodside Petroleum’s Scarborough project.

In December 2020, the Conservation Council of Western Australia lodged the action to overturn approvals for processing of gas at the Pluto and North West Shelf Venture plants.

The approvals will be critical for Woodside to proceed with the $US12 billion Scarborough project, for which the company hopes to make a final investment decision later this year.

The project would take gas from the Scarborough field to be processed at a new, second LNG train at Pluto.

Today, the approval dispute was listed for a two day hearing commencing 20 December 2021.

CCWA will be represented by the Environmental Defender’s Office and will allege the Environmental Protection Authority’s approvals in 2019 contravened the EPA act.

The council said at the time it submitted the challenge that the impact of carbon emissions on the climate were not assessed when approvals were granted.

But Woodside said the company had complied with regulatory requirements.

CCWA has said the hub projects would produce 6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in their lives, while past Woodside chief executive Peter Coleman has said every tonne of carbon emitted at the hub would help avoid 4 tonnes of emissions globally.

In August of this year, Woodside secured approval for the nearshore component of the pipeline to its Scarborough field, which would link the offshore gas to the processing plants on the Burrup Peninsula.

The company said extraction and processing of the Scarborough field gas in Commonwealth waters was assessed separately and accepted by the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority in March 2020.