Australia's largest oil and gas company's annual verbal stoush with its detractors on Thursday produced a few chinks of light amidst the performative heat of its annual general meeting.
Whistling in the wind
Chief executive Meg O'Neill's speech was interrupted about ten times by an individual protestor loudly blowing a whistle, being pulled away, allowing O'Neill to resume, and then another protestor repeated the process.
Woodside was ready with short videos to webcast while security did its job.
The rest of the two-hour event, short by recent standards, had few interruptions.
Most likely, the only result from the whistling was less time for questions later.
Safety last
Safety may be "a top priority at Woodside," but being honest about it is not.
"We are seeing positive results against key metrics," she said.
"Our growing business saw a large increase in total hours worked in 2024, without experiencing any permanent injuries or Tier 1 process safety events."
A more accurate statement would be: "We are seeing positive results against somesecondarykey metrics, but the main metric we have used for more than a decade is a disaster."
For 2024, Woodside switched the safety metric it uses to calculate bonuses from the industry standard total recordable incidents per million hours worked (TRIR) to what seems to be a new metric unique to Woodside: no more than one "high consequence injury" a year.
The switch put more dollars into the pockets of every director and senior executive. It also allowed O'Neill and Woodside chair Richard Goyder to avoid the delicate task of explaining how safety got significantly worse.
When the going gets tough, the powerful dodge responsibility and boost their pay packets.
To do this, when the tragic 2023 fatality on the North Rankin platform is still under investigation, is a true low in corporate morality.
Q & A minus the questions and answers
Goyder clamped down on shareholders for making statements rather than asking questions.
On face value, that is fair enough. However, what the meeting also needs is someone to clamp down on questions that have not been answered.
Time and time again, specific questions were met with generic waffle.
Presumably, many attendees have given up hope of getting a reasonable answer, so instead, they use the opportunity to have a dig.
The end result is a bit of a mess, but the fault lies on both sides.
Meg dives into context, coal and Collie
For years, the Australian gas export industry has marketed its climate credentials by claiming that its product displaces dirtier coal.
In April O'Neill, as first reported by Boiling Cold, undermined the case when asked if she could show that sending more gas to Asia reduced total emissions.
"Trying to definitively prove that our cargo of LNG displaced coal that would have otherwise been burned is a very difficult strategy,” she responded.
Dr Fiona Stanley, with the standing of a distinguished medical career and a huge hospital named after her, tackled O'Neill on the issue.
"Now I think you're taking a quote that I made a bit out of context," O'Neill said.
"Can I definitively prove that a certain ship of LNG is burned in Japan in lieu of a different ship of coal? Obviously, not."
O'Neill switched to an example closer to home:
"If North West Shelf is not able to provide domestic gas into the market in 2030, Collie will stay online longer."
Yes, WA's South West power system may need more gas when its three coal-fired power stations close this decade, but it is hard to see how the North West Shelf plant will help, and it may make the local gas supply worse.
Production is in decline, and, as comments at the AGM made clear, future supplies from Browse are far off.
More likely, after 2030, the plant will be used to ship out onshore gas when the WA Labor government inevitably caves into lobbying and lifts its ban on exporting onshore gas after 2030.
Rock art science avoided
It is seldom mentioned, but the only thing Tanya Plibersek, or her successor federal environment minister, has to consider regarding extending the life of the North West Shelf plant is its impact on Aboriginal heritage.
The plant sits next to the one to two million ancient engravings that form the World Heritage-nominated Murujuga rock art.
O'Neill was asked about recent research led by UWA professor of world rock art Ben Smith that showed emissions were already damaging the rock art.
Interestingly, O'Neill did not repeat a line from a previous AGM that no peer-reviewed research had identified a problem.
Instead, O'Neill downplayed what is widely accepted as the biggest threat to the rock art by describing nitrous oxides (NOx) as "theorised as potentially being harmful."
Why downplay NOx? Perhaps because almost all of it emitted near the rock art comes from the North West Shelf plant.
Woodside under investigation for breaching Federal environmental law
The big reveal at the AGM is that Woodside is under investigation for breaching federal government environmental law.
Greenpeace chief executive David Ritter said the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water was investigating whether Woodside's export of third-party gas from its North West Shelf had breached the EPBC Act.
"Why does Woodside believe that it is above our nation's environmental laws?" Ritter said.
Goyder said he thought the company had nothing to say on the investigation.
However, O'Neill did: "I'd just like to say that before we started processing third-party gas, we received appropriate approvals from the WA state government."
Not really a reassurance on Woodside's position under federal law.
Richard Goyder ❤️ Greenpeace (not)
Ritter had just started his question when Goyder interrupted with a one-minute time limit: "This is not a Greenpeace function."
Ritter then listed what he termed Woodside's "Faulty Towers environmental record: explosions, oil spills, chemical spills, gas leaks, corroded high-pressure equipment and "years of failing to remove and decommission a more than 2000-tonne riser tower that reportedly contained toxic fire retardant."
"You did nothing about that one, by the way, until we dropped the banner off it, saying, 'please pick up your mess'."
Goyder was distinctly unimpressed, comparing Woodside's observance of the law to Greenpeace activists hanging off cranes near the company's Perth headquarters and trespassing on its property.
O'Neill said Woodside had great support from the Exmouth community for its original plan to use the Nganhurra riser turret mooring as part of an artificial reef near Ningaloo.
She did not mention that federal government scientists had concluded “it would be difficult to exclude potential risks to humans through ingestion” of fish caught near the reef.
Goyder shut down a later question from a Greenpeace representative almost as soon as he started.
"We don't need a Greenpeace advocacy," he said.
It is a far cry from a few years ago when, after Ritter asked a question, Goyder praised the organisation and invited Ritter to meet with him.
Yep, total shareholder return is pretty rubbish
Woodside has been accused of failing to deliver decent returns to its owners by the environment-focused investor advocacy group the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility.
The ACCR argument was based on an independent comparison of Woodside with benchmarks, using the well-recognised metric of total shareholder return (TSR).
On returns, like safety, Woodside addresses its poor performance by changing the metric, not its behaviour.
However, Goyder was clear when quizzed at the meeting.
"On total shareholder return, I acknowledge that our share price performance hasn't been as we would like," he said.
'There are a range of factors around that: there are external factors and then there are the questions ... around does the balance sheet have the capacity to deal with these investments."
Goyder pointed out that no ratings agencies downgraded Woodside after its expensive final investment decision on its Louisiana LNG project last week.
I worked in oil & gas in commercial and engineering roles for 20 years. Since 2016, I have written for The West Australian, WAtoday and Boiling Cold, winning five WA Media Awards.
Doctors for the Environment Australia wants the Federal Court to review whether regulator NOPSEMA properly reviewed the climate impact of the $20 billion project.
Peter Milne
