Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I got fascinated by the Woodside story because of the
emphasis really that the climate movement decided to put on Woodside.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Marion Wilkinson has been reporting on climate and energy policy
for decades and has recently turned her attention to Australia's
fossil fuel giant Woodside. Last week, the government approved Woodside's
plans to keep its Northwest Shelf project producing gas out
to twenty seventy We've.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Always said with Australia's fossil fuel exports, whether they're coal
or liquid natural gas LNG, that that's the responsibility of
our customers under the Paris Agreement, and in fact I
heard Murray wat just talking on your podcast about that.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I guess the way the world has approached dealing with
climate change and greenhouse emissions, particularly through the Paris Agreement,
is to say that every country who's a signatory to
the agreement needs to reduce the emissions that it emits
in their own country.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
But things are different now. The climate emergency is such
that we actually need to seriously examine what we're doing
about our customers emissions when we send out all these
fossil fuels to the rest of the world. That's why
I was interested in the Woodside story.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM today
walk the award winning journalist and author of the quarterly
essay Woodside Versus the Planet, Marion Wilkinson on how one
company captured the country and convinced us that GUS is
necessary as the world transitions away from fossil fuels. It's Tuesday,
(01:56):
September sixteenth, Marian. This is a pivotal moment for the
energy giant Woodside, and I want to start by talking
about the company's recent annual general meeting. You were there,
so what happened?
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Well, it was it was a bit of surprise because
I did know that the annual general meetings of Woodside
had been quite fraud affairs for the last few years.
The level of security really surprised me. Around the Crown
Casino ballroom area in Perth, which is where it was
(02:33):
being held, there was security guards absolutely everywhere. It was
like going to the airport, you know, bags checked the
whole box and dice. Nevertheless, the climate activists came in
there no doubt, on proxies from other shareholders, blowing very
loud whistles which they later said was blowing the whistle
on Meg O'Neil, the climate criminal.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
It's very childish to stand up and shout, But having
a few people stand up, hackle and blow whistles doesn't
change our resolve, It doesn't change our beliefs.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
But what I was particularly interested in was whether, in
a broader sense, the shareholders were still questioning the leadership
of Woodside on their climate plan. And I think some
of the heat has gone out of the shareholder concern
(03:27):
about fossil fuel businesses. And I think there's a feeling,
certainly in financial circles that the Trump administration has given
the industry a big break, But I don't think that
actually changes the long term outlook for companies like Woodside.
(03:48):
I think they are still going to be under enormous
pressure because at the end of the day, you cannot
get around the science of climate change.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
You mentioned Meg O'Neill, so she's been the CEO of
Woodside for the past four years. During that time, the
company got approval to expand its gas production out to
twenty seventy So it seems like mag O'Neill is doing
quite a good job of what she's being paid to do.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Would you say, I think she's doing a very good
job at the moment for what the board wants her
to do. If we look at what's happened in the
last four years, She's managed to ram through the Scarborough Project.
It's meant expanding their Pluto gas processing plant on the
Barrett Peninsula. She's got both the WA government and the
(04:36):
federal government on side with the extension of the big
gas plant up there, the Northwest Shelf plant, and she
is now plowing on with trying to feed gas into
that Northwest Shelf plant from an expansion with some new
(04:57):
gas fields in what's called the Brows Basin up there.
So I think you'd have to say in the short
term she's been very successful.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Can you tell me a.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Little bit more about her rise to that job or
where did she come from? How did she become the CEO.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Well, she's basically been an ex On person all her life.
But the part of her career that really interested me
was that she went to headquarters around the time of
the Paris Agreement, which was twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, to
work for the eggs On Chief Executive. And I think
(05:34):
she would have been there right at the time of
one of the biggest original shareholder revolts internally against Eggson
by climate activists.
Speaker 6 (05:47):
A climate activist group has targeted Exon Mobile with a
shareholder resolution calling for deeper cuts in its carbon emissions.
Dutch group followed this has urged the US energy giant
to publish targets for a use in greenhouse gas emissions
and the burning of fossil fuels sold to customers.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
So she really knows the mo of climate activism and
climate shareholder activism.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
And you got an interview with her recently. How hard
was it to secure that and how did it go?
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Look, she was quite forthcoming in the end, and I
think she was very keen to put the line of
the company. She is absolutely determined, I think, to press
the case that the Wa Labor government and the federal
Albanesi government are pressing that what Woodside is doing by
(06:43):
exporting LNG is helping to decarbonize our Asian neighbors.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
And we should not be regressing. We should instead be
extending access to electricity to the hundreds of millions of
people in the developing world who still live without it.
To do that, we need new supplies of affordable and
reliable energy, but we also need to decarbonize.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
It's a claim that's been running for well over a
decade since the Paris Agreement was struck, but it is
now a claim that a lot of countries and companies
are hanging their hats on.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
And so does it hold up.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I think it's getting really questionable now. On the one hand,
we're seeing this rise in renewables, and I think that
the instinct of the company's like wood Side, will be
to try their hardest to hold onto their market share
and to hold on to their customers, and that means
(07:52):
that they're going to be really pressuring governments like the
Australian government to stand by this thesis that they're helping
decarbonize the world, when really we want to look at
whether that amount of leg going into the market at
the same time of the really rapid rise and renewables
(08:12):
that actually the grab the market share by the gas
companies will hinder the transition rather than help it.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Coming up.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
What the government gets out of its friendship with Woodside.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
The Australian government has stated it's support for the gas
industry and it has provided strong reassurances that Australia is
not quietly quitting its LNG industry. Woodside is certainly not
quietly quitting. We are deliberately delivering.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
So Marian, I want to drill down a bit more
on the relationship between Woodside and both the federal government
and Wa state government, because it seems like the government's
rhetoric on gas and the approvals that they're granting they
are all in line with Woodsides ambitions as a company.
So what did those governments get out of this relationship.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
I think the success of Woodside is inherently baked into
the psyche of Australia's main political parties. I think it
was an unbelievably ambitious, important project right at the beginning
when it started in the nineteen eighties. I mean it
(09:38):
was Australia's first LNG plant. It opened the door for
the other big LNG players to come to Australia. Certainly
in its original thinking, the domestic gas it supplied for
Wa was very important to that state, both the industry
and for the public. So on a simple level, there
(10:03):
is a bit of tax and export income. Critically for
both governments. There's jobs and that is a huge issue
in Wa. That means seats electoral seats. That means political
support in the Labor Party in the unions. That is
(10:24):
a really big deal. It's backed by Kerry Stokes, who's
the most important media proprietor in WA. So on so
many different levels, both the state and federal governments, whether
they're Liberal or Labor, they are intimately tied up with
(10:47):
the future of Woodside. But neither the company nor the
governments want to look ahead to what is actually happening
in the energy transition. So we hear about the vital
critical minerals industry all the time. These are the minerals
(11:07):
that are going to help build the energy transition. And
there's been a sleight of hand that somehow these critical
minerals projects are going to be fueled by green energy.
But if you spend any time in Western Australia, people
talk largely about gas fueling that industry. And this is
(11:31):
why Western Australia's emissions should be allowed to go up,
so they can help with the critical minerals industry and
so they can help decarbonize the world. Even though that
state's emissions are going up. To me both the government
and the gas companies in WA, they're a million miles
(11:54):
away from what the climate movement is thinking, and that
gap I think is untenable.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, do you think that is a problem for the
federal government because it seems like staking its reputation on
being a gas export and also investing in things like
critical minerals is one thing. But is that enough of
a benefit for the federal government to justify continuing to
support woodside in the way that it does.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I think that's the really critical question, And I think
the problem is we're trying to answer that question without
realistic data about what is going on in the decarbonization
of Asia. So I keep hearing this mantra from the
companies and from the governments that we're decarbonizing Asia, therefore
(12:44):
we're helping decarbonize the world. Once you start picking this apart,
the arguments become a lot more complicated if you look
at a country like Japan. Japan is and has been
since more or less the time of the Paris Agreement,
building its own gas enpire to re export gas around
(13:04):
the world and to trade gas around the world. So
I think a lot of Australians believe we're exporting to
Japan so they can keep the lights on in Tokyo.
And keep Japanese people warm. But actually Japan is also
becoming a major global gas trader. And also if we're saying, well,
(13:29):
we're going to let our customers deal with the emissions
from burning our gas, Japan might have a net zero
by twenty fifty target, But does Cambodia, does the Philippines,
does Vietnam? So the minute you start opening up this question,
it becomes quite messy and quite complicated. And I guess,
(13:53):
if this is going to be the rationale, let's get
some real information on it that is not just the
information put out by the gas companies.
Speaker 5 (14:04):
And so, given the international energy market, the changes you're
describing there, and the growing climate protest movement here in
Australia that is becoming more focused on Woodside, how secure
do you think the company's future is.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I think in the short term, mego'neil's future is very secure,
and I think the board is backing her. I think
while the climate movement's actions against Woodside have pretty much
been unsuccessful in actually stopping the projects to date, I
think a far bigger question is the global pressures that
(14:46):
will be on Australia. One from the speed of the
energy transition but I think probably more importantly it's going
to be the pressure of the pact of climate change
on Australia itself. From the current global emissions, we are
(15:07):
now looking at serious problems for the Great Barrier Reef
survival in our lifetime. And I think in the shorter
term there is a serious campaign that will happen around
the overhaul of Australia's environmental laws. I think a lot
(15:29):
of people in the climate movement are saying there has
to be a climate trigger in those laws, and I
think the reason they have to be on the table
is that Australians know that it's not just the emissions
at home that impact their lives with climate change. They
(15:50):
know what is impacting their life is the global emissions.
You can't just deal with your emissions at home and
say that you're a responsible climate actor if at the
same time you are trying to have your industries profit
(16:11):
from fossil fuel exports without saying we're going to take
on the hard yards, which is how we provide affordable
renewable energy for industry. That works.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Well.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Marian, thank you so much for your teian. Thanks Ruby.
You can read Marion Wilkinson's Quarterly Essay Woodside versus the
Planet at Quarterlyessay dot com dot au. Also in the
news today, Prime Minister Anthony Alberzi says the closure of
(16:49):
his electorate office in Sydney's Inner West after more than
thirty years was prompted by pro Palestinian protesters who've been
demonstrating outside for over a year. Says the protests have
affected people attending a nearby church and disrupted the church services,
and says a new site is being searched for relocation.
(17:10):
And Arab and Islamic leaders have gathered in Qatar to
discuss a response to Israel's strike on Doha last week,
which killed five Hamas members and a Katari security officer
and left civilians injured. Qatar's Prime minister says the attack
in Doha violated both Qatar's sovereignty and international law as
it struck near schools, housing and diplomatic missions. At the
(17:30):
same time as the meeting in Doha, Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Etna, who hosted US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
in Jerusalem. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
Thanks for listening.