Climate activists Petrina Harley and Emma recently blockaded the only access road to Woodside’s Burrup Hub project in the Pilbara, Western Australia.
Harley, a teacher, and school striker Emma locked on to a car and a boat on July 12 as the Western Australia and federal Labor governments consider giving Woodside a 50-year extension to emit 6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Green Left’s Isaac Nellist and Riley Breen recently spoke with Harley about the campaign to raise awareness about such disastrous fossil fuel projects.
Tell us about Woodside’s Burrup Hub project and why we need to oppose it?
The Burrup Hub project is Australia’s biggest polluting fossil fuel project. It includes the Perdaman Fertiliser Plant, Karratha Gas Plant, Scarborough Gas Plant (which is now expanding to twice its size) and two offshore platforms, with more to come.
This is the second time I blockaded the access road: three years ago I did the same when Scarborough Gas investment was agreed on.
Now, Browse Basin is the final piece of the puzzle: it hasn’t received all of its approvals yet so there’s a chance we can stop it.
This second platform will provide the gas needed to feed all of the other industrialisation going on.
Even worse, fracking companies up north as far as Broome are talking about fracking up there, so the Burrup Hub project will also take gas from there.
We are looking at hundreds of kilometres of pipeline, from Broome to Karratha, and 400 kilometres offshore from Karratha.
The offshore pipeline will go through Scott Reef, a migratory path for whales and endangered turtle species.
If all this goes ahead, we are looking at 6 billion tonnes of toxic carbon emissions into the atmosphere over the next 50 years.
Ancient Murujuga rock art — 50,000 years old rock painting — is also under threat.
Perdaman is already digging it up and moving it — they say safely. But they are breaking songlines and culture. First Nations people are devastated.
This rock art is older than the pyramids; it is older than Stonehenge. In any other country it would be made a national heritage site, sealed off and protected.
Tell us about the lock on protest to block the Burrup Hub access road?
We took a car and a boat so we could block both lanes and brought a concrete barrel on the back of the car.
I was in the boat with my arm encased in another concrete barrel. We cut a hole in the bottom of the boat, so we could set the concrete barrel onto the road.
I locked on for 12 hours until they could get me out. We timed the action with the shift change, so workers couldn’t go in.
What other climate actions has Disrupt Burrup Hub initiated?
WA is totally captured by fossil fuel corporations. Disrupt Burrup Hub aims to break Woodside’s and other fossil fuel companies’ “social licence”.
Woodside claims to be providing jobs and economic growth, but its cuts and redundancies show this to be a lie.
We disrupted a Fremantle Dockers game with a big banner because Woodside sponsor the team. We have organised sit-ins at minister’s offices and held rallies at Woodside’s office.
Recently, Emma and a couple of others held a protest at inside Woodside’s AGM.
We are trying to educate people about the damage Woodside is doing. People don’t realise the gas is all for export and the corporations pay hardly any tax on it.
The public subsidises these projects to the tune of $11 billion last year alone.
Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill received a salary of $12 million last year, while Woodside’s offshore workers were striking for better wages.
These actions are also aimed at disrupting businesses; costing them money and scaring investors and shareholders.
Even Woodside’s own shareholders voted down its climate policy at the AGM.
How have police and authorities responded to the protest actions?
I was in court for more than a year after last year’s action, because I pled “not guilty” as we were trying the “climate emergency defence”.
In Boorloo/Perth, about eight activists are still facing court for harmless stunts from over a year ago.
For example, one woman let off a gas canister in the foyer of the Woodside headquarters and they had to evacuate the building.
I thought it was really clever because the gas they used is the same gas mining companies use in an emergency to clear everybody out; it is completely harmless.
But four executives said they had breathing difficulties and had to go to hospital.
Woodside wants to sue her and she is facing prison time — for letting off a harmless gas canister.
The police have been trying to lay conspiracy charges. They have been seizing devices, laptops and phones. Quite a few people are facing charges for actions they were not even at.
A lock-on at O'Neill's house received a lot of attention, after the ABC’s Four Corners filmed it. The ABC handed over the footage to the police, betraying their sources and leading directly to three more people getting arrested.
The media went into overdrive claiming, falsely, that activists had threatened O’Neil’s life and scared her (adult) children.
They try to discredit us, but we are ordinary people who know that these fossil fuel projects can’t go ahead if we are going to have a safe future.
Is there a connection between disruptive direct actions and the building of a mass movement for climate justice?
We need mass consciousness to shift to stop the Burrup Hub project and others like it. So there needs to be a mass movement to do that.
At a similar Woodside project at James Price Point near Broome actvisits managed to set up an encampment, with rolling lock-ons every day. It went for about 6 months and they eventually won.
We aim to continue these small covert actions to inspire people to join the campaign. We also organise public meetings and non-violent direct action training.
The dilemma is that, because of security, we have to be secretive about organising actions which makes it hard to bring new people in. That is our real challenge at the moment.
[Listen to the full interview with Petrina Harley on the Green Left News Podcast. Find out more about Disrupt Burrup Hub on their website.]