Australian liquefied natural gas (LNG) developer Woodside Petroleum will change its name to Woodside Energy Group as it prepares to embrace the energy transition. Woodside’s Australian Stock Exchange ticker code will change from WPL to WDS. Woodside almost certainly won investor approval yesterday to boost global oil and gas production by adding BHP Group assets in a widely anticipated merger, while also facing a rebuke on its climate accounting. The oil and gas producer faced a backlash for its climate report. The inaugural plan, which was put to a non-binding vote, had received criticism for its emissions reduction’s plans, especially for failing to do enough to address Scope 3 emissions generated by customers’ use of its fuels.
In the Asia–Pacific region, where more than 1 billion people are expected to join the middle-class by 2030, energy use is expected to increase. Woodside therefore sees an important ongoing role for natural gas to assist with the decarbonization goals of developing countries in Asia, which typically are fast-growing and often coal dependent. This is because natural gas, when used to generate electricity, emits around half the life cycle emissions of coal. Whilst energy storage technologies such as batteries continue to improve, natural gas enables cost-effective and reliable conversion of power grids to renewable electricity because of its ability to ‘firm up’ intermittent generation.