“More gas will cook our planet:” Protestors disrupt oil and gas giant AGM as new CEO lands $17m package

Climate activists have repeatedly disrupted a gathering of shareholders of Australia’s biggest oil and gas company, with one breaching barricades to jump onto the stage.

The four Disrupt Burrup Hub protesters yelled at the board of Woodside Energy during its annual general meeting at Crown Towers in Perth on Thursday, before being escorted from the ballroom.

“We have 85 seconds left on the doomsday clock, we are running out of time,” one activist, whom the protest group identified as a 20-year-old university student, bellowed as investors jeered.

Shareholders approved all items of business at the meeting, although there was a significant 34.5 per cent vote against a bonus structure for new chief executive Liz Westcott.

Westcott will receive a fixed salary of $2.3 million in 2025/26 and could get as much as another $14.8 million if short and long-term performance hurdles are met.

Woodside chairman Richard Goyder said the backlash was “slightly frustrating” because the long-term incentive structure was an integral part of Woodside’s remuneration scheme, which the company had redesigned after feedback from shareholders.

Other protesters were escorted from the room by security while singing and holding “hands off Scott Reef” signs they had managed to smuggle in. 

Westcott took the protests in her stride, saying the conflict in the Middle East had caused significant disruption, “and we may get disruption today”.

Greens senator Steph Hodgins-May appeared at the meeting to question Woodside executives about their contention that a 25 per cent export tax would kill the company’s $37 billion Browse gas project off the coast of Western Australia.

“If giving Australians a fair return for their own gas makes your project unviable, doesn’t that show that the model is broken and depends on Australians effectively giving away their resources for free,” she said.

Westcott said the tax system gave Australians a fair return, with Woodside paying $2 billion in taxes in 2025, for an effective tax rate of 44 per cent.

“We are giving back to Australians,” she said. 

“Our new projects generate a huge amount of tax.”

Outside the meeting, several dozen activists held signs with slogans such as “Rage against the Woodside machine” and “More gas will cook our planet”.

Protester Laraine Brindle said she was concerned about the environmental destruction she believed was occurring as a result of industrial projects, such as Woodside’s gas projects.

“We have opportunities in Australia to be utilising renewable energies rather than what we’re doing, destroying the environment,” she said.

“I’ve lived through decades of beautiful country, and I want that preserved for my grandchildren and their children and their grandchildren.”

Westcott argued during the meeting that Woodside’s liquefied natural gas products were actually assisting in global decarbonisation by replacing coal as a fuel source in Asian markets. 

“When we look at the use of coal in the energy system, and we compare it to the use of natural gas, we can nearly halve the emissions by having coal replaced by gas,” she said.

Matt Roberts, executive director of the Conservation Council of WA, disputed that claim in remarks to the AGM, saying gas was in fact replacing renewables.

“We have these lines about it helping decarbonise, but the evidence suggests otherwise,” he said.

AAP