Woodside Petroleum

Woodside Petroleum, Australia's largest oil and gas producer, operates a portfolio heavily weighted toward high-emission fossil fuel assets. Its core business is the extraction and sale of oil and gas, with Scope 3 emissions from the combustion of its products constituting the vast majority of its total greenhouse gas footprint. The Transition Pathway Initiative assesses Woodside’s emissions performance as lagging behind its international oil and gas peers on alignment with a 1.5°C climate pathway.

In 2023, the company reported that its emissions had fallen 11%, but this claim relied entirely on purchased carbon offsets. Without these offsets, its operational (Scope 1 and 2) emissions actually increased by 3.5%. Its stated climate targets for Scope 3 emissions—those generated when customers burn its products—are explicitly “subject to commercial negotiations” and lack a clear, accountable reduction pathway. Meanwhile, the company continues to sanction major new fossil fuel projects, such as the $16 billion Scarborough-Pluto LNG development in 2021, which was described as Australia's largest new fossil fuel investment in nearly a decade. This expansion locks in decades of future emissions.