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The North West Shelf Venture, 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 construction of the Karratha Gas Plant included one of the largest mass-destruction events of Aboriginal Cultural Heritage. [1] The North West Shelf Venture is often cited as the single largest industrial emitter for Australia according to the Clean Energy Regulator. [2]
With investments totalling $25 billion since the early 1980s, the project is the largest resource development in Australian history. [3] In the late 1980s, it was the largest engineering project in the world. [4] 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.
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. [5] 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. [6]
The Karratha Gas Plant was built in the 1980s, originally including multiple LNG production trains. The cleaning of the Murujuga area for the construction of the Karratha Gas Plant involved the destruction of between 4,000 and 5,000 sacred rock art sites. [7] 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:
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:
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. [9] 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. [11]
During the construction of the Karratha Gas Plant in the 1980s, it is estimated that 5,000 sacred rock art sites were destroyed. [12] 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.
In 2023, during a speech at the National Press Club, Woodside CEO Meg O'Neill admitted that Woodside had previously removed and 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." [13] [14] 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." [13]
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. [15]
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 [16] 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. [17] [16] 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. [16]
The venture is Western Australia's largest single producer of domestic gas providing about 65% of total State production. [3] 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. [18]
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. [19] The proposal is to extend the life of the fossil fuel project by another 50 years. It is estimated that extending Australia's most polluting 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. [20]
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. [21]
The independent Environmental Protection Authority of Western Australia, advising the state government, has recommended extending the project's operation until 2070, provided it consistently reduces operational emissions. [22]
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. [23]
The first two phases of the project received an Engineering Heritage International Marker from Engineers Australia as part of its Engineering Heritage Recognition Program. [24]
Dampier is a major industrial port in the Pilbara region in the northwest of Western Australia. It is located near the city of Karratha and Port Walcott.
The Timor Sea is a relatively shallow sea in the Indian Ocean bounded to the north by the island of Timor with Timor-Leste to the north, Indonesia to the northwest, Arafura Sea to the east, and to the south by Australia. The Sunda Trench marks the deepest point of the Timor Sea with a depth of more than 3300 metres, separating the continents of Oceania in the southeast and Asia to the northwest and north. The Timor sea is prone to earthquakes and tsunamis north of the Sunda Trench, due to its location on the Ring of Fire as well as volcanic activity and can experience major cyclones, due to the proximity from the Equator.
Woodside Energy Group Ltd is an Australian petroleum exploration and production company. Woodside is the operator of oil and gas production in Australia and also Australia's largest independent dedicated oil and gas company. It is a public company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and has its headquarters in Perth, Western Australia. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, Woodside was ranked as the 1328th-largest public company in the world.
Karratha is a city in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, adjoining the port of Dampier. It is located in the traditional lands and waters of the Ngarluma people, for whom is has been Ngurra (home/Country) for tens of thousands of years. It was established in 1968 to accommodate the processing and exportation workforce of the Hamersley Iron mining company and, in the 1980s, the petroleum and liquefied natural gas operations of the Woodside-operated North West Shelf Venture located on Murujuga. As of the 2021 census, Karratha had an urban population of 17,013. The city's name comes from the cattle station of the same name, which derives from a word in a local Aboriginal language meaning "good country" or "soft earth". More recently, Ngarluma people have indicated the name may actually relate to an early interpretation of "Gardarra", stemming from the sacred site for the whale, located in the Karratha area, called "Gardarrabuga". The city is the seat of government of the City of Karratha, a local government area covering the surrounding region.
Shell Australia is the Australian subsidiary of Shell. Shell has operated in Australia since 1901, initially delivering bulk fuel into Australia, then establishing storage and distribution terminals, oil refineries, and a network of service stations. It extended its Australian activities to oil exploration, petrochemicals and coal mining, and became a leading partner in Australia's largest resource development project, the North West Shelf Venture.
Murujuga, formerly known as Dampier Island and today usually known as the Burrup Peninsula, is an area in the Dampier Archipelago, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, containing the town of Dampier. The Dampier Rock Art Precinct, which covers the entire archipelago, is the subject of ongoing political debate due to historical and proposed industrial development. Over 40% of Murujuga lies within Murujuga National Park, which contains within it the world's largest collection of ancient 40,000 year old rock art (petroglyphs).
The Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline (DBNGP) is the longest natural gas pipeline in Australia. It is 660mm in diameter, which also makes it one of Australia's largest in terms of transmission capacity. At the time of its commissioning in 1984, it was one of the longest gas pipelines in the world.
Dampier Highway, formerly known as Karratha-Dampier Road, is a Western Australian highway linking Dampier on the state's north-western coast with the nearby regional centre of Karratha. The 19.3 kilometres (12 mi) long highway is also the primary thoroughfare for both communities to access the Karratha Airport, as well as industrial facilities including the Pluto LNG project and Murujuga National Park located on the Burrup Peninsula.
The North West Shelf is a continental shelf region of Western Australia. It includes an extensive oil and gas region off the North West Australia coast in the Pilbara region.
The Flying Foam Massacre was a massacre of Aboriginal people around Flying Foam Passage on Murujuga in Western Australia by colonial settlers. Comprising a series of atrocities between February and May 1868, the massacre was in retaliation to the killing of a police officer, a police assistant, and a local workman. Collectively the atrocities resulted in the deaths of an unknown number of Jaburara people, but with estimates ranging from 15 to 150 dead men, women and children.
The Gorgon gas project is a multi-decade natural gas project in Western Australia, involving the development of the Greater Gorgon gas fields, subsea gas-gathering infrastructure, and a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant on Barrow Island. The project also includes a domestic gas component. Construction was completed in 2017.
Wheatstone LNG is a liquefied natural gas plant operating in the Ashburton North Strategic Industrial Area, which is located 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) west of Onslow, Western Australia. The project is operated by Chevron.
The petroleum industry in Western Australia is the largest contributor to the country's petroleum exports. Western Australia's North West Shelf (NWS) is the primary location from which production originates. Oil exports are shipped from Port Hedland.
The natural gas in Qatar covers a large portion of the world supply of natural gas. According to the Oil & Gas Journal, as of January 1, 2011, reserves of natural gas in Qatar were measured at approximately 896 trillion cubic feet ; this measurement means that the state contains 14% of all known natural-gas reserves, as the world's third-largest reserves, behind Russia and Iran. The majority of Qatar's natural gas is located in the massive offshore North Field, which spans an area roughly equivalent to Qatar itself. A part of the world's largest non-associated, natural-gas field, the North Field, is a geological extension of Iran's South Pars / North Dome Gas-Condensate field, which holds an additional 450 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural-gas reserves.
The Browse LNG was a liquefied natural gas plant project proposed for construction at James Price Point, 52 kilometres (32 mi) north of Broome on the Dampier Peninsula, Western Australia. It was considered by a joint venture including Woodside Petroleum, Shell, BP, Japan Australia LNG and BHP Billiton. It would have processed natural gas extracted from the Browse Basin. Liquefied natural gas would then be shipped from a port facility also located in the Browse LNG Precinct.
Prelude FLNG is a floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) platform owned by Shell plc and built by the Technip–Samsung Consortium (TSC) in South Korea for a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell, KOGAS, and Inpex. The hull was launched in December 2013.
The Ichthys gas field is a natural gas field located in the Timor Sea, off the northwestern coast of Australia. The field is located 220 km (140 mi) offshore Western Australia and 820 km (510 mi) southwest of Darwin, with an average water depth of approximately 250 m (820 ft). It was discovered in 2000 and developed by Inpex in partnership with Total, Tokyo Gas, Osaka Gas, Chubu Electric Power, Toho Gas, Kansai Electric Power and CPC.
The Scarborough gas field is a natural gas field located in the Indian Ocean north-west of Exmouth on the coast of Western Australia. The total Contingent Resource of the Scarborough gas field is around 7.3 trillion cubic feet. In 2018 Woodside bought ExxonMobil's 50% share of the retention lease, adding to the 25% it had acquired from BHP in 2016. Woodside now owns 75% of the retention lease and are operator of the joint venture, with BHP retaining the final 25%. On 7 April 2022, the company announced that final Australian federal and state government approvals for the project had been received.
Main Roads Western Australia controls the major roads in the state's Pilbara region. There are two main highways in the region: Great Northern Highway, which travels north through the region to Port Hedland and then north-west along the coast, as well as North West Coastal Highway, which heads south-west from Port Hedland. A series of main roads connects towns to the highways, and local roads provide additional links. The majority of these roads service the western half of the region, with few located in the various deserts east of the Oakover River. Roads are often named after the towns or areas they connect.
NEOMAD is a 3-episode futuristic fantasy adventure series, created as part of a governmentally supported community art project. The comic brings together live action film, with animation, music and voice overs. The series was created with the community of Roebourne, Western Australia as part of art and social justice organisation Big hART's Yijala Yala Project.
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