A renewed fight over Western Australia’s Browse gas fields is intensifying as industry and environmental groups clash over whether Australia’s biggest undeveloped gas resource is needed to prevent future energy shortages.
Browse, located off the Kimberley coast, contains almost 14 trillion cubic feet of gas, enough to theoretically meet Victoria’s current consumption for around seven decades.
Woodside Energy and its partners are proposing to transport the gas about 900 kilometres through a subsea pipeline to the North West Shelf processing facilities near Karratha.
Supporters argue the project could help address a looming Western Australian domestic gas shortage expected from around 2030 while extending the life of major existing processing infrastructure.
Is more gas actually needed?
New analysis from the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility challenges that argument.
It says Western Australia has sufficient existing gas resources to meet domestic requirements if exporters supply more than the minimum required under the state’s reservation policy.
Under current rules, major LNG developments are generally required to reserve the equivalent of 15% of production for domestic customers.
The gas industry argues the analysis ignores commercial realities because enormous LNG projects depend on export revenues to justify the billions of dollars required for development.
Browse could cost around A$50 billion and remains one of Australia’s most technically and environmentally challenging proposed energy developments.
The debate therefore extends beyond Browse itself.
It raises a much larger question about Australia’s energy transition: whether additional gas developments are necessary to maintain reliability while renewable generation expands, or whether existing export projects should simply supply more fuel to Australian customers.
