The Juice Media team are back, this time with a video tackling the controversial Burrup Hub oil/gas project in Western Australia. Funny, disturbing, brutal and definitely NSFW.
What Is The Burrup Hub?
According to Energy Information Australia, which claims to provide “factual, evidence-based information about Australia’s oil and gas exploration and production industry”1, Burrup Hub is a group of projects to extend the life of existing Woodside-operated facilities on the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia, and will create new energy sources.
The “fact sheet” is pretty light on information. It mentions bringing gas from the Scarborough and Browse fields to facilities on the mainland, expansion of Pluto LNG and a couple of other elements.
The document claims Burrup Hub will provide an average of 4,000 jobs per year over a 40-year period, and of course there’s effective consultation with community, Traditional Owners and other stakeholders claimed to be happening.
Australia’s Most Polluting Project Ever?
The document also mentions the use of “efficient solutions and renewable technologies to limit emissions.”
Just on those emissions – in 2020, the Conservation Council of Western Australia released a report claiming Burrup Hub would have a total carbon equivalent footprint of around 6 *billion* tonnes over its 50-year life.
In that report, the CCWA also claimed Burrup Hub would:
- Be the most polluting project ever to be developed in Australia.
- Be in direct breach of Australia’s commitments on climate change.
- See more than 50 wells drilled to extract oil and gas from beneath the pristine Scott Reef off the Kimberley coast.
- Risk health impacts for local communities and workers.
- Cause permanent damage to the world’s most extensive collection of Aboriginal rock art.
- Open up Western Australia to a large scale fracking and onshore gas industry.
- Deliver few benefits, while transferring billions of dollars of costs to West Australians.
The full CCWA report can be accessed here.
Burrup Hub Status
If you haven’t heard much about Burrup Hub recently, that’s probably by design. Use of the term “Burrup Hub” was reportedly dropped by Woodside last year.
“Since then, Woodside has preferred to break up the larger project into chunks when speaking to the public, without making clear that these pieces are interlinked,” says climate justice activist Gerard Mazza. “It’s attempted to avoid scrutiny of its plans which, when considered together, would make Australia’s meagre climate targets difficult to meet and threaten the Murujuga rock art through chemical emissions.”
Back in July, the WA EPA approved an extension of Woodside’s interconnected North West Shelf / Karratha Gas Plant, including the Browse Basin gas fields, until 2070. Construction commenced in September on Woodside’s Pluto/Scarborough project and the adjoining Perdaman fertiliser plant to be fed by Scarborough gas, both of which are key developments of the project.
But also in September, a full cultural heritage assessment of industrial impacts from the ‘Burrup Hub’ on sacred Murujuga rock art was announced. That investigation will report to Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.
Over the last 6 years, The Juice Media has released a bunch of “Honest Government Ads”, all of which can be found here.
Footnotes
- And is funded by the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association ↩
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Is a Far Left foul mouthed ‘comedy’ site really the sort of thing SQ wants to be referencing as a source for well anything?
Well that depends, was anything they said wrong?
Nice diversion tactics – but not working. Whichever way the message comes, it needs to get through! Some, apparently, would rather deny truth for self interests.
I would put money of the fact that less then 10% of the WA people would want this.
But the government represents the donors, not the people.
Politicians just tell us what we want to hear at election time, using the donors money then go back to giving them what they want.
And because they donate to both sides its a win/win case for corporations.
We need to get out of dangerous coal, oil, and gas and switch to more solar and other renewables.
We cant keep investing in big polluters
May I respectfully suggest that SQ keeps its political left wing bias and agenda out of sight. Keep politics out of it altogether. Although I stopped voting for the left of politics a long time ago I would be just as annoyed if SQ had a right wing agenda. I come to SQ for technical information. I’m not interested in the “personal political values” that SQ or other tech sites that I check out, hold. They’re irrelevant to my requirements. I just want the info. With that in mind I look forward to a change in SQ’s editorial policy because I want to continue recommending SQ without the proviso “Hey look, just be aware that it’s a ‘leftie’ site and they push the ‘leftie greenie’ line on stuff that isn’t about solar panels. Okay?” I don’t want to do that.
This is what annoys me about the climate change debate. For some reason it’s considered “left wing”. It’s not. It’s exactly what you want. It’s a science based factual account of what we are doing to the environment by pumping too much CO2 into the atmosphere. It’s well established and the only thing it has to do with politics is that for some reason they have taken sides rather than looking at the real urgency of the earth reaching a climate tipping point. Anyway – keep telling yourself it’s a left wing conspiracy until it’s too late to actually fix things.
Well said John. This is not a political debate with “sides,” it’s simply fact.