Updated ,first published
West Australian Premier Roger Cook has found an unlikely ally amid widespread backlash over comments on Woodside’s offshore Browse gas project that raised the spectre of fracking in the Kimberley region.
Cook told the Australian Financial Review on Thursday that WA could be forced to start fracking the Kimberley if Woodside’s Browse gas project was not developed – a stance he doubled down on in budget estimates that same day.
“There are decisions coming for the state into the future. Our (Australian Energy Market Operator) projects a gas shortfall in the early 2030s and as a state, we need to come to a decision about what that means for Western Australia,” he told estimates.
“If not Browse, then does something else make up that shortfall?”
And the premier has found an unlikely ally across the aisle in Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas, who said Cook’s comments spoke to the growing need to ensure we have enough energy to keep the lights on in the years ahead.
“The renewable energy transition will not be able to fulfil these energy demands without gas and the premier has conceded that we need more domestic gas to be able to keep our state running,” Zempilas said.
“We have gas reserves both onshore and offshore that can provide that energy security. We should use them.”
Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA chief executive Aaron Morey also backed Cook’s comments, stating it would be impossible to meet the rapid growth in global energy demand without new gas projects coming online.
“The premier is right – gas will be essential to keeping WA’s energy system reliable and affordable for decades to come,” Morey said.
“Browse is a no-brainer for WA. It would drive a $147 billion uplift in economic activity, support thousands of well-paying jobs and provide the firming capacity needed to support the deployment of renewables both at home and abroad.”
At a doorstop at the Australian Energy Producers conference in Adelaide on Thursday, federal Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said he also supported getting more oil and gas out of the ground.
“Let me tell you this: there is a huge amount of oil and gas in Australia which can be drilled, which we can extract now in the Beetaloo, in the Taroom Trough, in the Browse Basin,” he said.
“All of these are areas where we want to see drilling and production happening as fast as we possibly can.”
But conservation groups lined up to give Cook brickbats.
Environs Kimberley executive director Martin Pritchard said the premier’s comments were “absolutely outrageous”.
“To think about drilling 50 oil and gas wells around Scott Reef, and if that doesn’t happen, to frack the Kimberley,” he said.
“We really are extremely disappointed that the premier is using the iconic status of the Kimberley as a political football to try and get more gas into Western Australia when there’s plenty of gas available already.
“We’re awash with gas. We’ve got more gas than any other country in the world, and we’ve got plenty of gas for domestic use.”
He said if oil and gas companies reserved 15 per cent for the domestic market – as they were supposed to – instead of the current 8 per cent, there would be no shortfall and no need for fracking or the Browse project.
Conservation Council WA executive director Matt Roberts said West Australians were “sick of coming second to the gas industry”.
“We have more than enough gas in Western Australia, we have a gas export problem,” he said.
“What we need is for that gas to stay here and for us to actually plan a meaningful transition away from the gas industry, rather than having a premier who is out there actually giving us lines that come directly from the gas industry about their overinflated importance.”
WA Greens MP Sophie McNeill accused Cook of trying to blackmail the state.
“This is disgusting – he’s saying that if my mates at Woodside don’t get approval to destroy this reef for their massive gas field, then I’m going to destroy the Kimberley with fracking,” she said.
“What a complete disgrace.
“I don’t think the West Australian people are going to put up with … these kinds of stand-over tactics from the premier, where he’s making open threats to destroy our beautiful Kimberley or our gorgeous Scott Reef and our oceans.”
McNeill said the 15 per cent gas reservation policy needed to be legislated: “Watch this space.”
Meanwhile, prominent West Australian philanthropist Janet Holmes à Court has weighed into the gas debate, taking aim at the federal government’s move to allow the expansion of Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project.
Holmes à Court – whose son Simon Holmes à Court is the driving force behind the Climate 200 political group that helped elevate teal candidates to take over Liberal seats – said there should be ructions across the country for any government to give permission for a polluting business to go on until 2070.
“I don’t think people in Sydney and Melbourne are aware of the consequences of some of the dreadful things that happen here,” she told the Big Design Adventure podcast, hosted by Kevin McCloud and Tim Ross.
“The Kimberley is one of the last pristine places on the planet. It’s one of the few places in Australia that has had no extinctions, and if it’s fracked, you know it’s going to be ruined.
“It will be ruined, and it will harm the water supply for indigenous communities. It will be destroying very, very sacred sites for Indigenous people.
“Just the very thought of it should have people rioting in the streets in Sydney and Melbourne, because it is part of a unique part of this country, but I think Western Australia is sort of a bit out of sight, out of mind.”
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