Police and firefighters attended the scene on Tuesday morning and took three men and a woman into custody.
Charges have not yet been laid,and police confirmed there were no injuries.
Woodside’s headquarters is regularly the target of climate activism,with protests from Disrupt Burrup Hub –including an incident where a “stench” gas was let off in the building’s foyer – often congregating in front of the tower on the corner of Spring Street and Mount Street.
What is the Burrup Hub?
Woodside’s Burrup Hub plan is to develop new gas fields off the WA coast to supply its two existing gas export plants that would otherwise be close to shutting down by the end of the decade due to a lack of gas.
Two years ago,Woodside committed $18 billion to bring gas from the Scarborough field to its Pluto liquefied natural gas plant on the Burrup Peninsula near Karratha which is being doubled in size.
High gas prices after Russia invaded Ukraine gave fresh impetus to the second and more economically challenging part of the plan – piping gas 1000 kilometres from the CO2-rich Browse gas field to the ageing North West Shelf LNG plant just a few kilometres from Pluto.
Climate-warming emissions from the two plants and the far larger amount produced when the gas is burnt overseas are the main concerns of activists.
There are also concerns that emissions other than carbon dioxide from the two LNG plants and other nearby industriesmay damage the more than one million examples of Indigenous rock art on the peninsula called Murujuga by the traditional custodians.
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Approvals unblocked
In the past few days Woodside has made progress on environmental approvals for both projects.
On Friday,the offshore environment regulator NOPSEMA accepted Woodside’s plans for seismic testing and drilling at the Scarborough gas field.
The next day,the Norwegian-flagged 110 metre-long Geo Coral was performing seismic testing off the Pilbara coast,firing compressed air guns and recording echoes from the geological formations under the seabed.
In the past 12 months,the Federal Court twice decided that NOPSEMA-approved plans were developed with insufficient consultation with Indigenous stakeholders.
Six weeks ago,the court rejected a previous seismic testing approval for Woodside because it was concerned traditional custodian Raelene Cooper had not been adequately consulted.
Cooper said she had only met Woodside once since the decision.
“Waving through new approvals on a Friday night is a breathtaking regulatory scandal that illustrates a system completely captive to Woodside’s fossil fuel interests,” Cooper said.
A NOPSEMA spokeswoman said Friday was the statutory deadline for both assessments.
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“The regulations do not require agreement about an activity proceeding from every ‘relevant person’,and NOPSEMA is now satisfied the consultation required to be undertaken in preparing an environment plan is now complete,” he said.
A Woodside spokeswoman said drilling would start early in the new year.
On Monday,the WA Environmental Protection Authority published Woodside’s voluminous response to comments on its plans for Browse submitted almost three years ago.
Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill said in November that progress on environmental approvals,together with an agreement to process the gas at the North West Shelf gas export plant and a solution to the high amount of carbon dioxide in the reservoirs,were the three pre-conditions to starting detailed design on the $31 billion project.