Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill is confident that the long-awaited — and long-delayed — Australian federal approval of North West Shelf (NWS) LNG’s permit extension, received last month, will hold, despite two fresh legal challenges filed this week.

“We believe the [environmental] minister’s decision was lawful, and we will defend our position,” O’Neill said in a sideline interview at the Energy Intelligence Forum in London.

The federal environmental permit in question allows operatorship of the legacy LNG export plant to continue from 2030 to 2070. That extension is considered critical to supporting the plant’s ability to export significant third-party gas supplies, as well as gas from Woodside’s long-delayed — and also legally challenged — Browse development.

NWS operator Woodside, whose stake is due to rise from one-third to 50% once a deal to acquire Chevron’s 16.67% interest closes, welcomed the decision in September despite the approval coming with nearly 50 conditions to protect indigenous heritage and cut emissions.

However, this week saw advocacy group Friends of Australian Rock Art double down on its legal opposition to the extension, filing a challenge in Australia’s federal court that argued the “flawed” approval presents direct risks to indigenous rock art as well as broader human health via ongoing greenhouse gas emissions.

The advocacy group has a separate legal challenge filed in Western Australia’s supreme court, arguing that the extension’s state-level approval, which was passed in December 2024, failed to properly account for the Scope 3 (end-use) emissions it would cause.

Meanwhile, this week saw the Australian Conservation Foundation file its own federal legal challenge, arguing that the federal environmental approval erroneously weighed the extension’s economic benefits and environmental impacts, according to local press reports.

The legal challenges are the latest in a string of hurdles and delays for the NWS extension, which in turn has perpetually kept the development of Browse on the sidelines.

Critical Path

Aboveground considerations are indeed the primary obstacle to Browse going forward, O’Neill explained, although any final investment decision would also now face a higher bar for approval given the company’s stocked queue of in-development projects.

“We’re not looking for new things to add to the plate,” O’Neill told conference delegates, speaking to the Australian giant’s recent strategic prioritization of executing existing projects over exploration and expediting new project sanctions.

In the meantime, Woodside has “small teams that are very focused on the critical path issues” at Browse, O’Neill said in an exclusive interview with Energy Intelligence.

“Critical path is not technical work. Critical path is with Browse its environmental approvals,” she added.

As for its near-term focus for NWS, Woodside is using the permit extension approval to “really get the team focused on maximizing the value from the asset as it stands today,” O’Neill said.

“So we’ve been working on some additional infill drilling opportunities, working on opportunities to make modifications to the facility that will increase recovery and keep [the] focus on unit operating costs, which is always an important focus area when your production is declining,” she explained.

The second focal point is preparing the existing facility to process third-party gas.

“It’s already processing gas from Pluto and processing gas from the [onshore] Waitsia joint venture [with Beach Energy], but Browse would be the big client, so [we’re] making sure that we understand technically and commercially what’s required,” she said.

Woodside permanently took Train 2 at NWS off line earlier this year due to declining gas supplies, cutting its nameplate capacity from 16.9 million tons per year to 14.3 million tons/yr.