Woodside’s Scott Reef drilling project: EPA submissions OPEN
Woodside has just submitted a ‘Section 43A’ application to the EPA to modify its proposed Browse basin fossil gas drilling and piping project at spectacular Scott Reef, 440km north west of Broome in the Timor Sea.
The EPA has now opened Woodside’s proposed changes to its Browse gas drilling project for public comment, ending COB, 10 June. Once the EPA has made a decision on the proposed changes, the full EPA project assessment will resume.
EK and other conservation groups are calling for hundreds of public submissions to the EPA stating that Woodside’s proposed changes to its Browse/Scott Reef gas project are just tinkering around the edges and do nothing to make the project environmentally acceptable.
Scott Reef is a natural jewel off the Kimberley coast. There is no way that drilling, processing and piping gas in this living marine environment could ever be made environmentally acceptable.
In 2024 it was revealed via an FOI application that the EPA had formed the ‘preliminary view’ that Woodside’s Browse proposal was environmentally unacceptable. According to the documents, the EPA cited threats to endangered whales and turtles and the risk of an oil spill and concluded that the project posed threats of serious or irreversible damage.
Woodside’s latest tinkering has done nothing to change the reality that its project is unacceptable.
Woodside is proposing to reduce the overall footprint of its Browse gas project to supposedly avoid key environments like Sandy Islet. This sounds good, but of course if Woodside gets approval for this ‘modified’ Browse project there is nothing to stop the company from coming back in a few years time to seek approval to expand it back to its original scale.
This is just a ploy from Woodside to try to increase its chances of gaining EPA approval.
Woodside is also proposing the adoption of technologies to minimise the risk of a ‘loss-of-well control event’ through adoption of ‘dual pyrotechnic shear rams’ and reduce noise impacts through adoption of a ‘moored Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit’ (MODU). If they genuinely reduce the risks and impacts of fossil gas drilling in the marine environment, these technologies should have been part of Woodside’s original proposal - not belatedly offered as some kind of environmentally-sensitive concession.