The environment minister Murray Watt’s approval of the project last year was met with fury from conservationists and the Greens.
The approval, allowing Woodside’s Karratha gas processing plant to operate until 2070, has been described as a “carbon bomb” and according to ACF would see about 4bn tonnes of CO2 released into the atmosphere – equivalent to about 10 years of Australia’s annual emissions.
The gas plant operates beside the Murujuga indigenous rock art complex – a landscape of more than a million petroglyphs dating back 50,000 years, including the oldest known image of a human face.