North West Shelf Project

The North West Shelf Project, situated in the north-west of Western Australia, is Australia's largest resource development project. It involves the extraction of petroleum (mostly natural gas and condensate) at offshore production platforms, onshore processing and export of liquefied natural gas, and production of natural gas for industrial, commercial and domestic use within the state. North West Shelf gas is processed at the Woodside Energy operated Karratha Gas Plant, located on the Murujuga Cultural Landscape (Burrup Peninsula). The North West Shelf Venture is often cited as the single largest industrial emitter for Australia according to the Clean Energy Regulator.^[1]

North West Shelf Venture leases and infrastructure

With investments totalling $25 billion since the early 1980s, the project is the largest resource development in Australian history.^[2] In the late 1980s, it was the largest engineering project in the world.^[3] The Venture is underpinned by huge hydrocarbon reserves within the Carnarvon Basin, with only about one-third of the Venture's estimated total reserves of 33 trillion cubic feet (930 km³) of gas produced to date. The project is expected to operate until 2070.

It was owned by a joint venture of six partners – BHP, BP, Chevron, Shell, Woodside Petroleum and a 50:50 joint venture between Mitsubishi and Mitsui & Co – with each holding an equal one-sixth shareholding.^[4] Along with being a joint venture partner, Woodside is the project operator on behalf of the other participants.

On 1 June 2022, BHP's Petroleum business merged with Woodside Energy. Woodside Energy now hold one-third shareholding in the North West Shelf project.^[5]

Assets

Karratha Gas Plant

The Karratha Gas Plant was built in the 1980s, originally including multiple LNG production trains. In 2008, the facility capacity was increased to 16.3 million tonnes per year with the commissioning of a fifth, 4.4 million tonnes per year LNG production train. As well as processing gas for export, the facility supplies domestic supplies to consumers and businesses in Western Australia. The facility also processes condensate which is extracted from the gaseous hydrocarbons during processing.

The venture currently has three currently active offshore facilities. A fourth, North Rankin B is under construction:

• North Rankin A (NRA)

Commissioned in 1984, North Rankin A was the then-largest gas production platform in the world, capable of producing 1,815 million cubic feet (51,400,000 m³) of gas per day and up to 47,400 barrels per day (7,540 m³/d) of condensate. Modifications have increased the facility's capacity by 50% and it remains one of the world's largest gas platforms.^[6]

It is located 135 km north-west of Karratha and can accommodate more than 120 people. It services 25 production wells in the North Rankin and Perseus fields.

• Goodwyn A (GWA)

At a cost of $2bn, the platform was, when commissioned in early 1995, the largest single offshore oil and gas investment ever made in Australia.

In late 2001, the Goodwyn platform was linked to the Echo/Yodel gas and condensate fields via a 23 km 12-inch (300 mm) pipeline. Hydrocarbons from the Goodwyn field are transferred via a subsea pipeline to North Rankin before being transported to Karratha for processing. It is designed for up to 30 production wells (19 currently), including five re-injection wells. It accommodates 137 people.

It has a production capacity of 32,000 tonnes of gas per day.

• Cossack Pioneer Floating Production Storage and Off-Loading (FPSO)

The facility was commissioned in late 1995 and produces up to 50,000 barrels per day (7,900 m³/d)^[7] of crude oil which is offloaded via a flexible line to oil tankers moored astern. Located 34 km east of the North Rankin A platform, it is moored to a riser turret which is connected by flexible flowlines to subsea production wells at the Wanaea, Cossack, Lambert and Hermeson gas fields.

It has a storage capacity of 1.15 million barrels (183,000 m³) of oil and a production capacity of 150,000 barrels (24,000 m³) of oil per day.

In May 2008, Woodside announced plans to replace the 13-year-old vessel with a view to extending oil output to 2025-2030.^[7]

The condensate is transported to the Burrup Peninsula (Murujuga) onshore facility on the mainland 130 km away by two 42-inch (1.1 m) and 40-inch (1.0 m) undersea pipes.

Other assets include:

• LNG and condensate loading facilities at Withnell Bay at the Karratha Gas Plant,Karratha including jetties, LNG storage tanks and other infrastructure, and supported by Dampier Port Authority.^[8]
• A fleet of nine purpose built LNG cargo ships. The ships are powered using gas vapour from the storage tanks on board which is used to run steam turbines. Each of the ships is equipped with four spherical tanks giving a total capacity of 125,000 cubic metres (138,500 cubic metres in the case of the most recently delivered Northwest Swan) and utilise docking facilities at the Karratha gas plant's Withnell Bay terminal. A subsidiary company, North West Shelf Shipping Service Company Pty Ltd manages the shipping operations.

In March 2008, the partners approved a A$5 billion North Rankin 2 project which will underpin supply commitments to customers in Asia beyond 2013.^[7] The project will recover remaining low pressure gas from the ageing North Rankin and Perseus gas fields using compression. It will include the installation of a new platform (North Rankin B) which will stand in about 125 metres of water and will be connected by a 100-metre bridge to the existing North Rankin A platform.^[9]

Production and sales

The first LNG shipments went to Japan in 1989. Two hundred shipments per year (about one shipment every 1.5 days) in the purpose-built LNG carriers totalling more than seven million tons are made around the world. Markets include sales to long term customers in Japan and spot buyers in China, Spain, South Korea and the United States.^[10]

To date, the venture has produced more than 1000 cargoes of light crude oil (natural gas condensate). Condensate is sold on the international energy market.

In 2002, a contract was signed to supply 3 million tonnes of LNG a year^[11] from the North West Shelf Venture to China. The contract was worth $25 billion: between $700 million and $1 billion a year for 25 years.^[12][11] The price was guaranteed not to increase until 2031, and, as international LNG prices were increasing, by 2015 China was paying one-third as were Australian consumers.^[11]

The venture is Western Australia's largest single producer of domestic gas providing about 65% of total State production.^[2] Pipeline gas is processed at the consortium's Karratha facility, and transported to customers in southern Western Australia via the 1530 km Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline. A subsidiary company, North West Shelf Gas Pty Ltd markets the domestic gas component to customers in Western Australia through private contracts and sales to Alinta.^[13]

Engineering heritage award

The first two phases of the project received an Engineering Heritage International Marker from Engineers Australia as part of its Engineering Heritage Recognition Program.^[14]

Criticisms

Indigenous rock art

During the construction of the Karratha Gas Plant in the 1980s, it is estimated that 5,000 sacred rock art sites were destroyed.^[15] This is estimated to be the largest destruction of Aboriginal cultural heritage in Australia, and likely one of the largest global cultural heritage destruction events outside of war time.^{[citation needed]}

An agreement for Land Access to the area on which the North West Shelf operates was executed in 1998, between the Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi people. However, by this stage the gas plant has been in operation for more than a decade and over 5,000 sacred sites had already been destroyed. Thus the agreement has largely been considered unfair and unjust. Traditional Owners have regularly sought re-negotiation of the agreement, siting that Elders who signed the agreement could not read or write English and thus could not understand nor consent to the agreement.

In 2023, during a speech at the National Press Club, Woodside CEO Meg O'Neill admitted that Woodside had previously destroyed sacred Murujuga rock art during the construction of the Burrup Hub mega-project. This marks the first instance of Woodside publicly accepting responsibility for the destruction of numerous rock art sites on Murujuga. Woodside has previously been implicated in the destruction of thousands of sacred rock art sites during the construction of earlier phases of the Burrup Hub mega-project, including the Karratha Gas Plant and Pluto LNG processing facility. O'Neill characterized the historical removals, some of which occurred as recently as the 21st Century, as "culturally appropriate at the time."^[16][17] In response, Raelene Cooper, a Mardudhunera woman and former Chair of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, said in response:

"For Meg O'Neill to describe the destruction of our sacred rock art with bulldozers as culturally appropriate at the time quite frankly beggars belief and is deeply offensive. How can she say it was culturally appropriate - who did Woodside ask for permission, and who gave them cultural authority? Where was the consultation process? This is our sacred cultural heritage that Woodside bulldozed into the sea. Since the 1960s, archaeologists and experts have been clear about the cultural heritage significance of this rock art but Woodside continued to damage, remove and destroy our rock art. How was it culturally appropriate? It was not then and it is not now. It is misleading for anyone to suggest otherwise."^[16]

Emissions

In 2019, Woodside, and the Joint Venture partners, Chevron, Shell, BP, and Mimi, proposed to extend the life of the North West Shelf project, including the Karratha Gas Plant.^[18] The proposal is to extend the life of the fossil fuel project by another 50 years. It is estimated that extending the project by 50 years could result in approximately 4.3 billion tonnes of carbon emissions, with only 8 percent of that aligning with the country's net-zero target by 2050.^[19]

The North West Shelf gas project, operated by Woodside outside Karratha in Western Australia's northwest, emerged as Australia's largest industrial emitter in 2020–21, as reported by the Clean Energy Regulator.^[20]

The independent Environmental Protection Authority of Western Australia recommended to the state government extending the project's operation until 2070, provided it consistently reduces operational emissions.^[21]

If left unchecked, the project in the Pilbara region would emit 385 million tonnes of carbon over its extended lifespan through production, referred to as scope 1 emissions, at the Karratha Gas Plant.

The EPA's assessment does not include scope 3 emissions, generated from the combustion of the gas, predominantly in Asian countries. This omission implies that North West Shelf customers worldwide will emit approximately 80.19 million tonnes of carbon annually.^[22]

In December 2024, after a six year approval period an extension until 2070 was granted to the project by the state government.^[23] However, by April 2025, the commonwealth government had postponed a decision on the approval of the extension of the North West Shelf until after the 2025 federal election.

See also

• Gorgon gas project
• Wheatstone LNG
• Prelude FLNG
• Petroleum industry in Western Australia