Conservation activists have begun to challenge a major gas project off Western Australia in federal court. Campaign officials claim the plan is "a really, really big carbon bomb," but the companies involved have said they have passed rigorous environmental investigations.
The Scarborough Gas Field is a natural gas field located in the Indian Ocean, hundreds of kilometers from the west coast of Australia.
Australian company Woodside Energy is launching an offshore drilling platform to extract natural gas from undeveloped gas fields and send it to a liquefied natural gas treatment plant near the city of Karasa in a pipeline. I want to install it. In Western Australia.
Most of the liquefied natural gas is exported to Asia.
Woodside Energy states that the project is "subject to rigorous environmental assessments by various regulatory agencies." In a statement, the company's chief executive officer, Meg O'Neill, said the plan would increase employment and tax revenues and ensure the reliability of gas supplies.
O'Neill said in a proceedings in a federal court in Australia that the company "actively defends its position."
This proceeding was filed by the Australian Conservation Foundation. This is a rare legal challenge, as campaign participants claim that the Western Australia gas project will damage the Great Barrier Reef, 3,000 kilometers away on the other side of the country.
According to court documents, estimated emissions from the project will raise global temperatures by nearly 0.0004 degrees Celsius. Conservatives believe this "causes millions of coral deaths" due to warmer sea temperatures.
ACF has filed an injunction against Woodside Energy's Scarborough Gas project. The new Federal Environment Minister, Tanya Pribersek, wants to stop it until it can assess whether it can harm the Great Barrier Reef by exacerbating climate change.
ACF Chief Executive Officer Kelly O’Shanassy wants the government to review the process of approving the plan.
"It has gone through some sort of loophole in national environmental law. What we want the court to do is withdraw the project and, no, evaluate its climate. That's the impact on the Great Barrier Reef. That's the heart of the lawsuit, "says O'Shanathy.
While working on renewable energy, the recently elected Canberra central left government has stated that it will support "environmentally and commercially stacked" fossil fuel projects.
Australians have been warned about winter power outages due to power shortages on the populous East Coast. A variety of factors are causing the energy crisis, including unprecedented rain and the recent cold weather in eastern Australia. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February prompted a surge in global demand for fossil fuels. Power outages are also occurring at Australia's dilapidated local coal-fired power plants.
The United Nations assesses the impact of global warming on the Great Barrier Reef and local threats such as pollution and overfishing.
Perhaps Australia's largest natural treasure, coral reefs run 2,300 kilometers down the northeast coast and spread over areas about the size of Japan.
