Woodside working to meet gas demand challenge
It will take courage and vision for political leaders to make the reforms that are needed to enable the next wave of Australian energy projects, Energy Club members have been told.
Addressing the club’s June dinner, Woodside Energy's Executive Vice President Liz Westcott said the industry needed to be open to new ways of doing things that can transcend the polarisation of views and find common ground.
She said while sometimes it was easy to “feel like we are an industry under siege, the reality may be quite different”.
Ms Westcott cited recent polling in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald that found
60 per cent of 1,600 Australians who were surveyed supported the Federal Government’s Future Gas Strategy.
“I don’t want to overstate it, but it seems a shift may be underway in public sentiment,”
she said. “Cost-of-living pressures and the focus on energy security are contributing to growing public awareness of the importance of new gas supply.”
That change in sentiment meant a shift in expectations of the energy sector, to develop Australian natural gas resources in a timely fashion to avoid looming shortfalls and to
support the community and the economy.
“How can we expect politicians to show… courage if we haven’t laid the groundwork by ensuring our proposals help solve their challenges
and explaining how they do this?” she said.
“Their constituents care about jobs? We’re delivering them. Thousands of direct jobs in construction and operations of our facilities and tens of
thousands more jobs in the industries that we enable through energy supply.
“They want affordable and reliable energy to power homes and businesses. New gas supply supports this.
“Is decarbonisation a priority? Absolutely. And we’re working on it.
“Governments need us to explain to their constituents why what we do matters, and sometimes even to persuade critics in their own ranks.
“It’s easy to get frustrated with governments and regulators – and, no doubt, they get frustrated with us too – but the reality is we have a shared
objective: to maximise value by developing resources in a responsible way.”
Providing a snapshot of the competing interests and demands of stakeholders – including State and Federal Governments, the Karratha community and Traditional Owners, regional trading partners, shareholders, and critics – Ms Westcot said they covered the full spectrum “from more gas to cheaper gas, to cleaner gas, to no gas”.
“Clearly, we are not going to satisfy everyone. And we can’t let this disparity of views paralyse us. If it does, then Australia will miss out on value from its resources,” she said.
Woodside had been working with the State to help solve gas supply shortfalls, marketing extra gas to the local market this year, with about 32 petajoules of additional gas available to the WA market by the end of next year.
Woodside also filled all requests for domestic gas that were lodged in a recent expression of interest process, providing certainty to more than 25 customers, including large industrial users in the South West, hard rock mining, electricity and gas retailers.
“There may be no better example of industry working with government on a nation-building endeavour to solve energy supply challenges than the remarkable history of the Woodside-operated North West Shelf,” she said.
“The North West Shelf Project’s track record of reliable production has made it a mainstay of industry and energy in this State, and a pillar of economic diplomacy with
Australia’s key trading partners.”
On future supply, the Scarborough to Pluto Train2 Project is almost two-thirds complete and well positioned to deliver natural gas from 2026.
But more supply will be needed. “Our Japanese partners and investors are very interested in progress on the proposal to develop the Browse resource through
the Karratha Gas Plant.
“That development could play a significant role in alleviating a forecast domestic gas shortfall in WA.”
Woodside was working on the next phase of the North West Shelf Project, seeking approval for ongoing operations of the Karratha Gas Plant, while managing
natural field decline.
“Soon there will be insufficient gas supply to keep all five LNG processing trains at Karratha Gas Plant full, so the Joint Venture is preparing to retire one train – potentially as early as this year,” she said.
“We are talking with our community and all layers of government about what this entails.”
On decarbonisation, Ms Westcott said Woodside was implementing decarbonisation plans at each operational site, with stepchange solutions requiring Carbon
Capture and Storage.
“CCS solutions have the potential to reduce our own emissions and those of our customers,” she said.
“Australia has a natural advantage, with significant reservoirs that can be used for storage. Woodside is working on several opportunities, deploying our knowledge of geoscience, subsurface engineering and bulk-gas handling.
“It’s a fascinating time for our industry.
“The world needs energy. And it also needs the technical expertise and ingenuity that helped us build a new industry for Australia to find ways to continue supplying
energy with lower emissions.
“We need to harness the same spirit, determination and collaboration that built the North West Shelf as we work with our stakeholders to capture the next opportunities.”
Special thank you to our June Industry Dinner Event Sponsors; Verbrec, Deloitte, Vertech Group, SLB and Wood.
For those who missed Liz's presentation, the speech notes can be viewed here.