Media release: Disrupt Burrup Hub campaigners occupy Woodside’s Melbourne headquarters to protest national impact of Woodside’s Burrup Hub

9.30am AEDT Tuesday 19 December – Melbourne 

Five Disrupt Burrup Hub campaigners have occupied the Melbourne headquarters of fossil fuel company Woodside to highlight the company’s climate and culture-destroying projects on Murujuga in Western Australia, and to demand federal and state governments stop approving coal and gas projects. 

This is the first Disrupt Burrup Hub action taking place outside of Western Australia as opposition to Woodside’s Burrup Hub escalates around the country as awareness grows it is Australia’s biggest fossil fuel project. 

At approximately 9.00am AEDT this morning, five Melbourne-based Disrupt Burrup Hub campaigners peacefully occupied the Melbourne office of Woodside at Level 34, 120 Collins St. The group consists of climate activists, artists, construction workers and teachers. The protestors held banners saying “gas kills” and “Disrupt Burrup Hub”. 

The protest comes after the United Nations COP Climate Summit and the commitment by a majority of the world’s countries to phase out the use of fossil fuels. It is also in the wake of the federal offshore oil and gas regulator NOPSEMA approved Woodside’s Environment Plans for offshore underwater installations late on Friday December 8, one week after NOPSEMA approved Woodside’s Environment Plans to start drilling and seismic blasting at the Scarborough gas field (part of Woodside’s Burrup Hub) with Woodside confirming they immediately commenced marine blasting from December 2.

Woodside are currently seeking government approvals for Browse, the largest untapped gas field in Australia, which would complete the final and largest component of Woodside’s Burrup Hub mega-project, the most polluting fossil fuel project in Australia emitting more than 6 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2070.

Disrupt Burrup Hub campaigner Noemie Huttner-Koros said: 

“We are here in solidarity with activists in Western Australia who have been successfully drawing the world’s attention to Woodside’s destructive and dangerous Burrup Hub project. Woodside’s Burrup Hub project would destroy any chance of Australia meeting our climate obligations, by becoming the most polluting project in the country. We are here to put Woodside on notice and say that the whole country is watching the destruction you are enacting on sacred sites at Murujuga and to the climate. We are also here to bring attention to the increased repression climate protestors are facing both in Western Australia and nationally, and to protect our collective rights to protest.”