PERTH, May 16, 2026, 03:09 AWST
Woodside Energy Group Ltd faces fresh industrial pressure at its Karratha gas plant and Pluto liquefied natural gas facilities in Western Australia, with the Offshore Alliance union saying some workers will begin strike action from Wednesday. Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is gas cooled into liquid form so it can be shipped. The same union said talks with Inpex over its Ichthys LNG facility in Darwin had failed, adding another pressure point for Australian gas exports.
This matters because the sites are not small. Bloomberg reported that Karratha has about 14 million tonnes a year of export capacity and Pluto about 5 million tonnes, with a second Pluto train of roughly the same size under expansion; it also said Asian buyers are already competing for cargoes after Middle East disruptions curbed LNG flows.
The timing is awkward for Woodside. The company said its Scarborough Energy Project and Pluto Train 2 were 96% complete at the end of March and still on budget, with first LNG targeted for the fourth quarter of 2026. It was also preparing a major Pluto Train 1 maintenance turnaround in May.
Woodside shares closed up 2.06% at A$31.25 on the ASX on Friday, delayed market data showed, after trading between A$30.80 and A$31.29.
The Offshore Alliance, a grouping of the Australian Workers’ Union and Maritime Union of Australia, said it had notified contractor UGL of planned Protected Industrial Action, the legal term for strike steps allowed during bargaining. Woodside said it respects contractors’ rights to strike and that any such action involving UGL employees “will be managed by UGL”; UGL declined to comment. People Matters
A second development landed the same day. Japan’s Inpex said INPEX Mirai Upstream signed a deal to buy PetroChina International Investment (Australia)’s 10.67% interest in the Browse joint venture, including the Brecknock, Calliance and Torosa gas fields off Western Australia. Completion requires regulatory and joint venture participant approvals.
Browse is one of Woodside’s largest undecided Australian growth options. Woodside’s project page describes it as Australia’s biggest undeveloped offshore gas resource and says the concept would use two floating production, storage and offloading facilities plus a roughly 900 km pipeline to existing North West Shelf infrastructure at Karratha.
Inpex did not disclose the price. Reuters reported that PetroChina bought the Browse stake from BHP for $1.63 billion in 2012, and that BP, Woodside and Japan Australia LNG, a Mitsui-Mitsubishi venture, are the other Browse partners. “This could cause an existing Browse joint venture member to exercise their pre-emptive rights,” MST Marquee analyst Saul Kavonic said, adding that Inpex might want to send the gas to Ichthys; an Inpex spokesperson told Reuters no decision had been made because Browse remains at feasibility stage. Reuters
The risk is that both tracks run slower than the headline. Reuters reported this week that a Woodside-commissioned Deloitte assessment put Browse capital expenditure at A$48.7 billion ($35.2 billion), above a 2019 estimate after carbon capture and storage — trapping carbon dioxide underground — was added. Environmental groups still oppose the plan over Scott Reef, pygmy blue whales and green turtles; strike action may also be averted, narrowed or managed by UGL without a material outage.
For Woodside, the week turns on execution, not only headlines. The group has a near-term labor fight at running plants, a late-stage Scarborough start-up to protect, and a Browse partner reshuffle that may help validate the resource but does not settle route, approvals or cost.
