The full implications of Australia's North West Shelf decision
Authors
Bill Hare, Piers Verstegen, Thomas Houlie, Michiel Schaeffer
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On 28 May 2025, Australian Environment Minister Murray Watt made the first step towards what looks set to be a final decision to approve Woodside Energy's North West Shelf LNG plant in Western Australia through to 2070.
This decision has a number of alarming implications: for the climate globally, for Australia's efforts to meet its own targets, and it will put Australia into the global spotlight adversely as it gears up to bid for hosting the COP31 global climate talks in Adelaide next year. It remains to be seen whether the Pacific Island nations - Australia's potential partners in hosting COP31 - will still be keen to co-host the talks given this decision.
In this briefing we set out the full implications of this decision, from the enormous emissions that will pollute the atmosphere for thousands of years, their impacts on the ground, the ability of the government to meet its Paris Agreement commitments (and indeed its net zero ambitions), and counter some of the claims being made by the government around Australia's need for gas, and the need of trading partners.