No one committed to Paris goals can seriously argue Woodside’s LNG project should operate until 2070

Safety flares burn at the Woodside-operated North West Shelf gas project near Karratha in Western Australia. Photograph: Greg Wood/AFP/Getty Images

We don’t know all the evidence that the new environment minister, Murray Watt, had before him when he decided to approve a 40-year life extension to one of Australia’s biggest fossil fuel developments so that it could run until 2070.

But we do know this. The decision largely turned on whether the North West Shelf liquefied natural gas (LNG) development on the Pilbara’s Burrup Hub can coexist for decades into the future with an incredible collection of ancient Murujuga rock art, some of it nearly 50,000 years old and unlike anything else on the planet.