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Key Insights
- Woodside's Browse project is not required to meet domestic gas needs. ACCR analysed Western Australia’s (WA) gas balance to 2050 and found that gas producers have enough uncontracted gas to meet domestic demand. The smallest annual surplus of uncontracted gas is approximately 9.6 million tonnes (Mt) in 2035 – equivalent to 107% of that year’s domestic demand.
- The main technical constraint on increasing domestic gas supply is the capacity of infrastructure that delivers gas from processing facilities to the domestic market, rather than a lack of upstream gas. Additional gas from projects like Browse will not address this infrastructure bottleneck.
- Expectations of a possible domestic gas shortfall are informed by LNG producers’ commercial preference for export markets rather than physical constraints.
- Even if there was a technical domestic gas shortfall, Browse would be a poor solution. It is a remote, expensive and operationally complex project, involving six companies that have consistently failed to reach a final investment decision.
- Browse LNG is high on the global cost curve. It is expected to cost more than 70% of competing gas resources.
- CCS projects globally have struggled with high costs, low reliability and cancellations. Even if Browse CCS successfully operates as planned, it would capture just 7% of the project’s total emissions.
- Browse is incompatible with a Paris-aligned carbon budget. All currently operating oil and gas fields and projects are expected to use the remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to well below 2°C.
- Oil and gas companies overstate the role of LNG in the energy transition. Gas-importing countries have more commonly displaced coal and gas with renewable energy, the cost of renewables and battery storage continues to fall well below LNG, and many countries are focusing energy investment on renewables to reduce their exposure to LNG costs and geopolitical risks.
Download a PDF of Browse: unnecessary, costly, high risk