(Reuters) – An environmental body lost on Tuesday its bid to overturn government approvals for Woodside Petroleum to process gas at two oil and gas projects in Western Australia, paving the way for the company to develop a $12 billion project.
The Supreme Court of Western Australia dismissed two proceedings brought by the Conservation Council of Western Australia (CCWA) challenging the approvals made in 2019 to process gas from the North West Shelf and Pluto LNG facilities.
CCWA had said the facilities could allow billions of tons of carbon pollution from the company’s proposed Burrup Hub LNG expansion.
“We are disappointed by this decision… the Scarborough proposal will bring dangerous levels of carbon and methane pollution, accelerate climate damage and have a serious impact on the prevalence of extreme weather events, like bushfires ” Maggie Wood, the Executive Director of CCWA, said.
Woodside can now develop the twinned Scarborough and Pluto project — essential to the future of Australia’s biggest independent oil and gas company — as it has witnessed limited growth over the past several years.
A separate lawsuit by the body challenging the approval of Woodside’s expansion of its Pluto LNG train is yet to be heard in court.
(Reporting by Arundhati Dutta in Bengaluru; editing by Uttaresh.V)
