Western Australia’s EPA has made a big call on a major gas expansion. Will state and federal governments back it up?

‘Scott Reef has existed as a natural wonder for about 15m years. Woodside is arguing that is worth risking for a fossil fuel development that will operate, at most, for a few decades.’ Photograph: Greenpeace

The news that the Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority is likely to recommend that a massive gas export development off the state’s north-west shouldn’t go ahead is remarkable, but shouldn’t be.

We don’t know much about what the EPA told Woodside Energy in February about its Browse project off the state’s Kimberley coast. All we have is a line that WAtoday extracted from the EPA – that it had formed a “preliminary view” that the proposal was “unacceptable”.