Huge gas fields – under a coral reef. Will a rejection on environmental grounds stop Woodside’s Browse project?

By Samantha Hepburn, Professor, Deakin Law School, Deakin University

For decades, Australia’s largest independent oil and gas company, Woodside, has eyed off a prize: the largest known unconventional gas fields in the nation.

But there’s a problem. The enormous Brecknock, Calliance and Torosa gas fields are hundreds of kilometres off the coast of Western Australia – buried underneath pristine coral reefs. To access it, the company would have to drill more than 50 wells around the Scott Reef system and pipe the gas 900 km along the ocean floor to a processing plant.

Now Woodside has an even larger problem. The state’s Environmental Protection…

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