Woodside’s Burrup Hub an irredeemable threat to WA’s oceans and marine life. It’s also the biggest fossil fuel threat in Australia and the fifth most polluting gas project in the world.
The Burrup Hub project is what Woodside calls its plan to drill the Scarborough gas field (which is already well under construction), drill the Browse gas field underneath Scott Reef and extend the life of a massive gas plant called the North West Shelf LNG Plant, which processes gas for export.
The Burrup Hub represents an irredeemable threat to Western Australia’s marine life – putting 54 threatened species and up to 12 marine parks at risk. But the destruction won’t end there – the project will emit over 6.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. Most of the gas from the Burrup Hub will be sold overseas.
Greenpeace Australia Pacific has been working for over 2 years to stop the Burrup Hub – it is Australia’s biggest climate threat, and poses catastrophic risks to the pristine environment of WA.
The story so far
Fossil fuel company Woodside has had its sights set on the Browse gas field for a long time. The company’s first attempt to drill it was defeated by a huge community campaign centred in the Kimberley in northern Western Australia. Then in 2019, Woodside was back – this time with a plan to pipe the Browse gas onshore to its existing LNG processing plant, extending its life until the 2070s.
The first stage of Woodside’s Burrup Hub, Scarborough, is under construction, with 30 gas wells being drilled off the coast of Exmouth, WA. Woodside has risked killing whales by deafening them with seismic blasting, dug up endangered turtle habitat, and when it is complete, Scarborough puts UNESCO-protected Ningaloo Reef within the danger zone for an oil spill.
Now, Woodside is proposing the next stage of the Burrup Hub: up to 50 more gas wells to be drilled around Scott Reef. The closest well will be just over 2km from the edge of the reef, with Woodside planning to extract gas from directly underneath the coral reef. The void left after removing the gas is likely to cause the reef to sink.
Scott Reef is a globally significant marine ecosystem, home to hundreds of species, including sea snakes, sharks, rays and sawfish. It provides critical habitat to endangered pygmy blue whales and vulnerable green turtles.
The new gas from Browse needs to be processed before it could be sent overseas. So, Woodside hopes to extend the life of its ageing North West Shelf LNG plant until the 2070s.
Woodside Has Not Won Yet
While Scarborough is currently being drilled, Woodside needs environmental approvals from Federal Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek, and WA Environment Minister, Reece Whitby, to drill for new gas at Browse and extend the life of the North West Shelf LNG Plant.
Despite the accelerating climate crisis and Australia’s commitment to phase out of fossil fuels, projects like the Burrup Hub can still be approved because Woodside only needs to account for emissions on Australian territory. Because Woodside would sell over 80 per cent of the gas it drills from the Burrup Hub overseas (most of it royalty-free), it doesn’t need to include the emissions from gas burnt outside Australia when getting environmental approvals.
An industry source has confirmed to the media that Western Australia’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has essentially written off the company’s Browse project as too dangerous to proceed. This almost never happens under our current environmental and climate laws. These revelations make clear what we’ve long known to be true—that Woodside’s disastrous Burrup Hub project, including its Browse site, is likely to be a disaster for our precious environment, our reefs and threatened species.
Almost half a million Greenpeace supporters have signed our petition calling on Minister Plibersek to rule out the project, and the chorus against the Burrup Hub project is growing stronger every year.
And here is how we win
There is a clear path to stopping mega gas projects like the Burrup Hub – using the Federal environmental protections we do have in place, which protect ‘unique plants, animals, habitats and places’, to stop Woodside’s plans.
There are also state laws in WA that protect the environment. The WA EPA has stated they have serious concerns about Browse, and their view is that it poses an ‘unacceptable’ risk to the environment.
That is why Greenpeace AP is doing everything we can to document the pristine biodiversity of Scott Reef, showing just how critical it is to protect our unique oceans and marine life.
The Environment Ministers in Perth and Canberra need to hear how much Australians value our natural environment and want it protected. Without public outcry, the only voices politicians hear is Woodside and the fossil fuel lobby, who seek to downplay and minimise the environmental threat of offshore gas drilling.
Marine scientists, NGOs and Greenpeace have examined Woodside’s proposal closely and have identified several severe threats to our environment that could convince the Minister to say ‘no’ to the Burrup Hub on environmental grounds. The risks include:
- The sinking of Scott Reef into the ocean (because the gas is extracted from underneath it) causing turtle nesting grounds to wash away;
- Underwater noise pollution impacting whale foraging and migration;
- Chemical dumping from the construction phase and production rigs poisoning plankton, fish and marine turtles;
- Artificial lighting and flaring (burning off released gas) disorientating turtle hatchlings and sea birds
- A gas and oil spill, covering Scott Reef and surrounding marine parks in condensate, creating an environmental catastrophe.
The decision of our Governments to approve or reject the Burrup Hub project will define their environmental legacy for decades to come.
Burrup Hub: Irredeemably Bad
While the federal government made a disappointing commitment to continue approving fossil gas drilling when it released its gas strategy, the Burrup Hub is in its own category of ‘bad’, because:
- Scott Reef is a pristine and idyllic coral atoll teaming with marine life and providing critical habitat for threatened species;
- The Burrup Hub’s Browse project is an enormous new and exceptionally dirty gas field;
- Most of the gas will be sold overseas, royalty-free;
- The community in WA are rallying against the project to protect our oceans; and
- The Government wants to invest in a future made in Australia using clean energy, not lock Australia into gas until 2070.
But to defeat Woodside’s expensive PR and army of lobbyists, we need to use people-power to show our Government that Australians are united behind one message: we must protect our environment from the Burrup Hub mega gas project.
What is next for Greenpeace
The news that the WA EPA agrees that Browse is a uniquely terrible idea has, quite literally, added wind in the sails of our campaign to Stop Woodside.
Right now, our new campaign vessel, the Oceania, is on its way to Western Australia, where we will be connecting with the growing community who oppose Woodside’s disastrous Burrup Hub, and amplifying their calls to stop this monstrous project.
In Canberra, we will be taking the voices of the almost half a million Australians who have signed our petition to stop the Burrup Hub directly to Parliament. We will send a message to our elected leaders, loud and clear, that Australians reject Woodside’s Burrup Hub.
Defeating the Burrup Hub would be one of the single most effective things we can do to fight for a safer climate, and a thriving environment.
Will you help?
Environmental and Indigenous activists say the railway, if it proceeds, will unleash an explosion of carbon and further imperil the world’s biggest and most climate-critical rainforest.
A nearly 600-mile railway that would cut through the heart of the Amazon rainforest got one step closer to reality Thursday when the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled that a national park could be resized to accommodate its passage.
A new U.N. resolution reinforces a landmark court opinion tying fossil fuel use to human rights abuses and legal responsibility for climate change.
A climate justice seed planted by young Pacific Island students in 2019, as mass participation in climate demonstrations peaked in the millions, is starting to reshape international law around the realities of a rapidly warming planet.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 22 May 2026: UN adopts landmark resolution | Trump takes on ‘RCP8.5’ | Climate migration
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
UN adopts landmark opinion
ICJ OPINION: The UN has adopted a resolution backing a landmark world court opinion stating that countries have a legal obligation to address climate change, reported the Guardian. Some 141 countries voted in favour of the resolution, while only eight voted against: the US; Israel; Iran; Russia; Belarus; Saudi Arabia; Yemen; and Liberia. There were also 28 absentations, including India and Turkey, the host of COP31.
‘DETERMINED’: The text adopted by the UN general assembly “stresses” that “climate change is an unprecedented challenge of civilizational proportions” and says the assembly is “determined” to “translate the court’s findings into enhanced multilateral cooperation and accelerated climate action at all levels, consistent with international law”. The text “urges” states to implement measures including “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems”. It also “requests” the next UN secretary general to report on progress in 2027 and adds a formal follow-up to the agenda of the UN general assembly in 2028.
AMENDMENTS REJECTED: A UN press summary detailed how countries rejected four proposed amendments to the text by a group of largely Arab nations. These amendments would have undercut the world court’s legal advice on countries’ climate obligations by saying its views should only be taken into account “as appropriate”. They also would have added a reference to 2C, instead of focusing on 1.5C alone, got rid of the formal follow-up process in 2028 and added a reference to the role of carbon capture and storage.
Scenario sceptic
‘GOOD RIDDANCE’: US president Donald Trump declared “good riddance” to a very high emissions modelling scenario in a Truth Social post on Saturday, misleadingly stating that “the United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!” The post was quickly picked up by right-leaning media, including Fox News, the New York Post and the Australian.
NEW SCENARIOS: Trump’s claim follows the publication of a new set of emissions scenarios that will underpin research cited in the next set of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In a guest post for Carbon Brief, scientists explained that the very high emissions scenario has “become implausible, based on trends in the costs of renewables, the emergence of climate policy and recent emission trends”.
TRUMP FACTCHECKED:Carbon Brief published a factcheck of Trump’s claims. It noted that the IPCC does not develop, control or own climate scenarios and has not published anything stating that any climate scenario is “wrong”. It added: “Projections suggest that the world is still on course for between 2.5C and 3C of warming…previously described as ‘catastrophic’ by the UN.”
Around the world
- ADAPTATION NEEDED: The UK’s Climate Change Committee outlined how investing in adaptation now could produce “long-term savings”, Carbon Brief reported. UK ministers are preparing to accept a CCC recommendation to “set a legally binding goal of cutting emissions 87% by 2040”, reported the Times.
- ELECTRIFY EVERYTHING: COP31 president-designate Murat Kurum told the Copenhagen climate ministerial that countries should be “decarbonising the way we generate electricity, but also expanding electrification into every sphere of life”, according to Climate Home News.
- STAFF CUT: Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, is preparing to fire one-third of the team working on the national climate model that provides future projections, reported the Guardian.
- TARGET MISSED: An independent body has warned that Germany is expected to miss its 2030 climate goals and emit more CO2 than previously forecast, reported Reuters. According to Deutsche Welle, the country could breach its goal by up to 100m tonnes of CO2.
- PEAK POWER: India’s peak power demand “smashed all records” on Tuesday, after the country’s ongoing heatwave drove a “sharp rise” in electricity consumption, according to the Economic Times. The record fell again on Thursday, said Reuters.
140
The number of countries in the world that have net-zero targets.
2
Major emitters that do not have a net-zero target – a group comprising Iran and the US, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Latest climate research
- Global warming above 4C is projected to cause large decreases in “climate connectivity” between habitats for land animals | Nature Climate Change
- Around 6% of respiratory deaths in Brazil from 2010-20 were attributable to “non-optimal temperatures”, accounting for more than 66,000 excess deaths | PLOS Climate
- Fungi that cause diseases in plants will approximately double in abundance around the Antarctic Peninsula by 2100 under a moderate emissions scenario | Global Change Biology
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The world added nearly 100 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-power capacity in 2025 – the equivalent of roughly 100 large coal plants – according to the latest annual report from Global Energy Monitor (GEM). This is a ten-year high, according to Carbon Brief’s coverage, which noted that the world’s coal plants nevertheless generated less electricity. The chart above shows that 95% of the new coal plants were built in India and China last year.
Spotlight
Climate migration
This week, Carbon Brief speaks to experts at a conference on migration and climate change in London about what their research could mean for how people move around the world in the future.
Prof Kerilyn Schewel, assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
We have moved beyond a ‘push factor’ narrative – that climate change is coming and uprooting communities – to a more nuanced perspective that recognises that people are already moving for all kinds of reasons… [For example] the more that young people are accessing formal education, the more they want to leave – particularly rural communities. We have to be very careful not to assume that when people want to leave, it is always driven by climate change. There are other developmental factors that are also shaping desires to move. This is a research frontier – seeing how environmental factors intersect with these other social or developmental outcomes.
Dr Aromar Revi, founding director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements
The future of mobility is much more certain than [climate change is]. People have been mobile for a very long time. That’s been an important part of the transformation of societies and economies for centuries…mobility is part of the solution [to climate change]. It is not the full solution, but it’s part of the solution. People are voting with their feet and with their aspirations to make a change.
Prof Nitya Rao, a professor of gender and development at the University of East Anglia
There are many things that the system can do to welcome migrants and be more sensitive to different types of migrants and their needs… In the short term, [migrants] need piped water, a proper home, care for young children…In the longer term, we have to address structural inequality. There are still barriers to people accessing resources – especially productive assets such as land, capital and livestock…And these barriers are split by gender, class, ethnicity and so on. These need to be addressed, I think, to really make migration a case of [climate] adaptation and not just survival.
Prof Jon Barnett, professor in the school of geography, earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Melbourne
In the Pacific islands, international migration isn’t driven by climate change. It’s enabled by the capacity of people to cross borders, so it’s all about migration agreements. As climate change amplifies pressures on people’s livelihoods, we may end up with a whole series of transnational populations that are kind of constantly in churn – where they’re not just living on the island, but also in Australia, New Zealand, the US.
Dr Maria Franco Gavonel, lecturer in global social policy and international development at the University of York
The migration response towards almost any climate event is short lived and short distance, so it will mostly affect internal movement rather than international…So all these narratives about climate refugees – like human rights related to international migration – are overstating the extent to which this is going to happen.
Dr Benoy Peter, the executive director of the Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development in India
Every one of us, including you and me, have benefited from migration. Migration is the fastest way for intergenerational upward social mobility for people from socially and economically disadvantaged populations. So I see migration as a [climate] solution.
Cecilia Keating also contributed to this spotlight. Read more of Carbon Brief’s coverage of the conference.
Watch, read, listen
TICE QUESTIONED: The Bloomberg Zero podcast interviewed Richard Tice, the deputy leader of the hard-right Reform UK party, who exposed his rejection of climate science and support for the oil and gas industry.
‘CLIMATE CROSSROADS’: The Guardian examined how Colombia’s upcoming election could leave the major oil-and-gas producer at a “climate crossroads”.
LAND GRAB: A Floodlight investigation for Inside Climate News examined “Trump officials, billionaires and the quiet reshaping of America’s public lands”.
Coming up
- 24 May: Cyprus elections
- 28-29 May: Blue economy and finance forum, Monaco
- 28 May: International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Investment 2026 report launch
Pick of the jobs
- Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, editor in chief | Salary: $140,000-$160,000. Location: Washington DC, Chicago or New York City
- Climate Outreach, researcher | Salary: £44,000. Location: Remote (UK)
- University of Manchester, research associate, energy and climate governance | Salary: £37,694-£46,049. Location: Manchester, UK
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 22 May 2026: UN adopts landmark resolution | Trump takes on ‘RCP8.5’ | Climate migration appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 22 May 2026: UN adopts landmark resolution | Trump takes on ‘RCP8.5’ | Climate migration
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