When a gas project can't win on the facts, it goes shopping for a new story. Last week, Woodside's CEO Liz Westcott told a Perth business breakfast that the proposed Browse gas and CCS project could power AI data centres and keep AUKUS shipyards humming. The same project was once sold to keep the lights on in WA.
Tue 6 Oct 2026 10.12 AEDT
Photo: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
Blue Mountains City Council is the latest local government to call for big polluters to pay for the costs of global warming. The council unanimously passed a motion earlier this week urging the Albanese Government to introduce a levy on fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of climate-fuelled natural disasters.
The latest corporate tax data released today by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) showed that once again, major gas producers are paying no company tax, and despite claims that changes to the Petroleum Rent Resources Tax (PRRT) would deliver “more revenue sooner”, the PRRT in 2024-25 raised less tax than in 2020-21.
When a gas project can’t win on the facts, it goes shopping for a new story. Last week, Woodside’s CEO Liz Westcott told a Perth business breakfast that the proposed Browse gas and CCS project could power AI data centres and keep AUKUS shipyards humming. The same project was once sold to keep the lights on in WA.
Let’s look at what Browse is.
It is the country’s biggest undeveloped gas field, pitched as feedstock to keep the ageing North West Shelf plant running until 2070. The cost has blown out to A$48.7 billion, according to a Deloitte report that Woodside commissioned itself.
Then there’s the pollution. Figures put before the federal Environment Minister estimate that Browse would generate about 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide over its life. That is more than three and a half times Australia’s entire annual emissions.
Most of that gas is bound for export. When it is burned overseas, those scope 3 emissions don’t appear in Australia’s books. The atmosphere counts them anyway.
Browse is also one of the country’s most carbon-rich fields. Woodside’s own planning documents put reservoir CO2 at around 80 million tonnes. That is pollution released just by getting the gas out of the ground.
Canberra knows this is a problem. The Future Gas Strategy expects new gas supply to manage its reservoir emissions, with the expansive and failed Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) as the primary tool. The government has also consulted on draft offshore guidelines to reduce and, where possible, eliminate venting and flaring. A field like Browse can’t simply vent its CO2. It needs a way to dump (usually in the atmosphere) and offset it – in the spreadsheets at least.
So, Woodside has bolted on a quick fix. It proposes to use carbon dumping via CCS to capture some of that CO2 and dump it under the seabed near Scott Reef, at up to 4 million tonnes a year.
Note the ‘up to’ – it is the upper limit of zero. That would be the first offshore scheme of its kind in Australia.
Woodside says that upper limit cuts the project’s direct emissions by 53 million tonnes, or 47 per cent. Even in this best-case scenario, more than half of the direct pollution still escapes. And 53 million tonnes are about three per cent of the 1.6 billion tonnes the project would be responsible for.
The rest falls to dodgy carbon offsets. The North West Shelf extension was approved with conditions requiring Woodside to cut emissions every year and reach net zero by 2050 under the Safeguard Mechanism. Browse gas would run through that plant. Analysts at IEEFA expect Woodside to rely on so-called carbon offsets for whatever the CCS doesn’t capture. RenewEconomy reports Browse’s high CO2 content would need to be fully offset from day one.
Think about what that means. Carbon dumping via CCS and so-called offsets are how a project this size gets through the door. They let a carbon bomb claim it fits inside the rules, and they hand a big polluter more room to pollute.
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The track record should worry anyone relying on this. Chevron’s Gorgon project captured only a third of its target volumes in 2023-24. And Australia’s carbon credit market has well-documented integrity problems. Every low-quality, low-integrity offset used is pollution not removed.
Now the new fossil fuel sales pitch. For years the argument for Browse was domestic energy security. That has worn thin. The Conservation Council of WA points out that Woodside has sent less than four per cent of the gas from its Pluto project to the domestic market. WA has enough gas to manage the transition without Browse.
So, the company has found two new reasons: AUKUS and AI data centres.
The Federal Energy Minister has said new data centres should run on renewables, not gas. Gas-fired data centres would lock in decades of pollution just when we should be building out solar, wind and storage.
This is the gas industry’s new playbook, and AI data centres are its Trojan horse.
In the Northern Territory, Beetaloo Energy has launched Beetaloo Digital, a gas-fired AI data centre precinct near Darwin. Its managing director says the “durable, predictable demand” of data centres underpins long-term field development. In plain English, the data centre exists to create a market for fracked gas. Woodside is now telling the same story about Browse.
Notice the timing, too. Woodside is making its pitch while the Environment Minister weighs the project. The Australian Conservation Foundation has forced a public comment process on what Browse’s emissions would do to the World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef. Woodside also pulled its CCS proposal out of the federal approvals process in March, promising to resubmit. A story about submarines and AI data servers is handy when the details of the new gas and CCS proposal get too hard.
Then there is Scott Reef, an ancient coral atoll that is home to more than 2,000 marine species, including pygmy blue whales and green turtles. Woodside wants to drill around it, pipe the gas 900 kilometres to Karratha, and inject carbon dioxide into the seabed nearby. You can’t hide that destruction behind a data centre.
The questions for the minister are simple. Does this project fit a safe climate and our commitments to a Transition Away from Fossil Fuels? Does it need accounting tricks to look like it does? Would it still make sense if the gas weren’t mostly bound for export markets?
If the honest answer is no, Woodside’s Browse proposal should be refused. A new sales pitch and greenwashing campaign doesn’t change the carbon accounting reality.
Louise Morris is Head of Fossil Fuel Transition at the Australia Institute, with 20 years’ experience encompassing climate, energy, forest protection, and law reform in the not-for-profit sector, and federal politics.
