Australia's National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority has greenlit oil and gas company Santos' Barossa offshore gas field — a decision environmental experts have denounced as the world grapples with the effects of rising global temperatures.
What's happening?
In April, the Guardian reported that Australia gave Santos' environmental plan for the Barossa offshore gas field its seal of approval, even though the project is projected to add nearly 300 million tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The move, which came amid Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's reelection campaign, outraged environmental advocates, who said the Labor government wasn't doing enough to protect Australians from the dangerous effects of global overheating.
"This is Australia's dirtiest gas project, and it should never have been given the green light," said Gavan McFadzean, a program manager at the Australian Conservation Foundation. "Barossa is a massive climate bomb that will produce more climate pollution than usable gas."
"It is unfathomable that it has been approved in 2025, when the climate science is clear that we can have no new fossil fuel projects if we are to avoid dangerous global heating," added Environment Centre NT executive director Kirsty Howey.
Why is this important?
While carbon dioxide can enter Earth's atmosphere through natural processes — for instance, the breakdown of organic matter — and plays a life-supporting role in regulating temperatures, human activities have boosted atmospheric levels of this heat-trapping gas by 50% since the start of the industrial revolution in the 18th century, according to NASA.
The dirty energy industry is the primary culprit. Now, the planet's temperatures are rising at an "unprecedented" rate.
With the Earth's warmer atmosphere holding more moisture, extreme weather events are growing more intense and frequent, resulting in hundreds of billions of dollars of damage, displacing families, and destroying food crops.
While funding oil and gas projects may provide a short-term boost, experts warn that the long-term economic impact could be dire.
In December, data from the Network for Greening the Financial System suggested that Australia could experience a 14% annual drop in its gross domestic product because of the effects of a warming climate, according to the Investor Group on Climate Change. The report estimates some of its trading partners could take an even greater hit to their GDP as a result.
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No way 👎 What's being done about this?
In January, Tanya Plibersek, Australia's Minister for the Environment and Water, said in a press release that the Labor party has been working to transform Australia into a "renewable energy superpower," hooking up a record amount of clean power in 2024.
"I've now approved 70 renewable energy projects — enough to power more than 8 million Australian homes," Plibersek said, underscoring that the transition could help drive down household utility bills.
As for the Barossa project, a Labor campaign spokesperson told the Guardian that the Albanese government, which won reelection in the May election, would remain committed to driving down energy prices and pollution while updating Australia's energy system.
"The Barossa Gas Project is subject to the Albanese Government's strengthened safeguard mechanism, which requires major emitters to reduce or offset their emissions over time, in line with net zero by 2050 targets," the spokesperson said.
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