Massive new Kimberley fracking industry could keep Woodside gas plant going until 2070

The Albanese government recently agreed a light touch environmental review of what could become a massive new fracking industry, threatening one of Australia’s most iconic wild places: Western Australia’s Kimberley.  

This a potentially huge development, part of a cluster of decisions being assessed independently  that could lock Australia into a destructive fossil fuel industry for 50 years. 

Last month, the Albanese government agreed that it will not undertake a full assessment of Black Mountain’s Valhalla fracking proposal – the first in the Kimberley – for a 20-well tranche of the operation and that is the leading edge of what could become a massively destructive industry aimed at keeping Woodside’s LNG plant going until 2070.

Fracking for fossil gas in the Kimberley region threatens a unique and iconic landscape, one of the greatest relatively untouched savannah lands in the world, the only place in Australia that has not seen a mammal extinction, but where the ecology is itself threatened by global warming caused by ongoing fossil fuel emissions.

The federal government’s assessment of the fracking proposal is to be based only on information provided by the company, without the full environmental impact statement assessment  around the wide range of issues that this project raises. 

The government’s own legislation says it must critically and fully assess the impact of fracking on the National Heritage status of the Kimberley, on listed threatened species (like the Bilby) and communities, on migratory species and the massive amount of water required. But it will now just look at information supplied by the company. 

We estimate Black Mountain’s Valhalla project, if developed as planned, would add 1.8-2.6% to Australia’s emissions. Everything points to its gas – and that of three other fracking companies waiting in the wings – being destined to support Woodside Energy’s Karratha LNG plant, which has been approved to operate through to 2070 by the WA  government. 

If  these companies’ commercialisation plans come about, we could see anything from 2,050 -7,200 fracking wells in the Kimberley region by the 2040s. 

A cluster of federal and state approvals are underway for Woodside’s massive WA gas developments, including its offshore Browse gas basin, the 50-year lifetime extension to 2070 of its Karratha LNG plant, and the recent approval of the offshore Scarborough gas field. 

But in this complex set of approvals, none are considering the crucial question of where all the gas for Woodside’s 50-year LNG production plans would come from. 

These projects support Woodside’s Burrup Hub and include:  

– Lifetime extension of the 16.9 Mt LNG/yr  capacity Karratha Northwest Shelf (NWS) LNG plant until 2070 (the State government has given it a licence up to 18Mt LNG/yr) with Federal Govt approval now pending.   

– Approval of the Scarborough gas field development for supplying the 9.9 Mt LNG/yr Pluto LNG plant.

– Browse gas field development which threatens Scott Reef – to supply the Karratha LNG plant.   

The Karratha LNG plant is already beginning to run out of gas, as the North West Shelf gas fields deplete. Woodside has shut one of its five trains, and more may follow if it cannot source more gas in both the short and longer term. This may explain the recent hysteria from Woodside and the WA state government over the Browse approval processes.  

Despite its massive size and destructive potential, the Browse project would not fully replace the gas needed for the Karratha LNG plant. 

From the end of this decade this plant would have a gap in gas supply equivalent to about 2Mt LNG production per year and, from the mid 2030s to 2040s, this gap would grow to 3-4.5 Mt LNG per year, reaching 10 Mt LNG/yr by 2050 and averaging about 15 Mt LNG/yr for the last 20 years of its permitted life to 2070.

There is only one place that such a volume of gas can come from: fracking projects in the Canning Basin, which covers much of the Kimberley.  Woodside itself stated at its 2024 AGM that it is interested in taking gas from the Canning Basin to keep Burrup Hub operating until 2070.

We took a detailed look at the Canning Basin fracking developments in a recent report. 

Black Mountain’s Valhalla project could supply enough gas to produce about 3 Mt LNG pa, about what Woodside needs to keep its Karratha LNG plant going at full capacity even after Browse comes online. Valhalla would start out needing at least 100 wells and after 20 years would need to have some 940-3,300 wells to maintain production, with the ultimate number depending on well productivity.  

Valhalla alone would add 1.8-2.6% to Australia’s  greenhouse gas emissions. The upstream emissions component of emissions would be 2-3.5 times higher than the limit set by the 2018 Western Australia Independent Scientific Panel Inquiry into Hydraulic Fracture Stimulation at 0.5% of Australis’s 2016 emissions.

To keep Woodside’s Karratha LNG plant going at full capacity, it is likely it will need 3-4.5 Mt LNG pa equivalent gas from the mid 2030s to 2040s even with Browse fully developed initially and then from 2050 at least 10 Mt LNG pa equivalent gas. 

The commercialisation plans of the four companies wanting to frack the Kimberley – including Buru Energy, Theia Energy and Rey Resources alongside Valhalla – add up to sufficient gas to produce around 7 Mt LNG pa. This could see  2000-7,200 fracking wells by the mid-2040s in the Kimberley.

In total, these projects  would add emissions equivalent to 8-11% of Australia’s 2022 GHG emissions (equivalent to 44- 58% of WA’s 2022 emissions) to keep Woodside’s LNG plant going.

At this scale, our analysis shows that the fracking industry’s intrusion into the Kimberley landscape could see anything from 8,700 to over 30,000 wells by the 2050s.

Both the WA and federal government insist that Australian gas is needed to support the transition to renewable energy, particularly in Asia, giving them an apparent rationale to continue to support new gas developments. But this spurious claim has little basis in fact.

Our analysis shows this to be wrong, the CSIRO’s analysis for Woodside shows it’s wrong, and now the US Department of Energy has published work showing it’s wrong.  

The International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Road Map – which aligns with the Paris agreement 1.5° limit – shows that total gas demand globally must drop quickly, even while renewable energy massively ramps up.

When one connects all the dots – the battles over the Browse gas development at Scott reef, the state government’s 50 year lifetime approval extension for Woodside, the federal government decision for just a “light touch” approval of the trial fracking Valhalla development in the Kimberley, and the WA government’s refusal to ban fracking in the Kimberley – it appears clear that the big game is to keep Woodside supplied with gas through 2070. 

This is happening against the background of the catastrophic and global warming-induced bleaching of one of WA’s iconic ecosystems, the World Heritage-listed Ningaloo reef on the back of a massive marine heat wave which has been destroying marine life from the top of the Kimberley down into the Midwest of WA.

It is clear that the federal government needs to undertake a full assessment of the total implications of all of these projects, seen together, and in the context of the potential opening up of the Kimberly for fracking to supply Woodside’s LNG plant from the 2030s. 

Beyond the environmental impacts and global warming consequences, this assessment should include consideration of whether these are in the public interest, given the urgent need to tackle climate change and the fact that Woodside’s Burrup will ultimately contribute 6 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere to 2070.