Shareholders of Australian petroleum giant Woodside Energy have turned down a climate plan proposed by the company’s management amid pressure from climate activists.
During Woodside’s annual general meeting on April 24, its shareholders voted on a number of issues, including the chairman position and an action plan to help the company transition to net zero.
While the incumbent chairman, Richard Goyder, was re-elected with 83.4 percent support, 58.4 percent of the shareholders turned down its climate plan.
Despite the vote on the climate plan being non-binding and purely advisory, it showed that most of Woodside’s shareholders disagreed with the company’s vision about its decarbonisation toward net zero emissions.
The petroleum producer set targets to slash its scope one and two emissions by 15 percent by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030.
It also planned to lift the amount of investment in new energy products and lower carbon services from $335 million (US$218 million) in 2023 to $5 billion by 2030.
After the vote, Mr. Goyder expressed his disappointment with the shareholders’ decision.
“Naturally, we’re disappointed, but respect the result,” he said.
“The vote reflects the challenges and complexities of the energy transition, and today’s outcome is one that we take very seriously.”
The chairman also noted that before the April 24 meeting, he had over 80 meetings with Woodside’s shareholders and proxy advisors in the past year where they had honest and open discussions on the climate action plan.
“We would love to be investing more money in renewable energy right now, if only we had the customers, and current customers were prepared to make the trade-offs, particularly financial,” he said during the meeting.
Nevertheless, Mr. Goyder acknowledged that many of Woodside’s customers were incurring substantial costs due to their energy transition.
Climate Activists Storm Woodside’s Meeting
Woodside’s annual meeting did not go smoothly, with reports of interruptions and chants targeting Woodside executives and their families.It was also reported that the activists shouted out the names of Woodside executives’ children and accused the company of “killing kids” with its projects.
In a later press conference, Woodside CEO Meg O'Neil condemned these actions, saying they were “completely out of line” and that “families have the right to go about their business.”
“We believe that climate change is an important topic. There‘ll be different opinions. There’ll be a robust debate, and we welcome the robust debate but people need to understand where the line is,” she said.
Western Australia Premier Roger Cook also believed that people should behave respectfully and not try to intimidate others when protesting.
Apart from the disruption inside Woodside’s meeting, around 200 people were seen holding signs and shouting slogans outside the meeting venue to protest the company.
Meanwhile, Harriet Kater, an executive at the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, criticised Woodside’s climate action plan, saying it was “flawed.”
“For Woodside’s board to maintain that the only path to shareholder value is persevering with low value, high-risk oil, and gas projects suggests a lack of skills, poor judgement, and risky group-think.”
