Two court cases started this week in Melbourne challenging the Australian government's approval of a major gas project. Environment Minister Murray Watt approved the extension of Woodside's North West Shelf gas processing plant in September 2025, allowing it to keep running until 2070. Two groups — the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and Friends of Australian Rock Art (Fara) — are now asking a judge to overturn that decision The Guardian.

The ACF estimates the extension would release about 4 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. That is roughly equal to 10 years of Australia's total yearly emissions. CO2, or carbon dioxide, is the main gas driving climate change. ACF's legal argument is that Minister Watt did not properly consider whether all those emissions could cause serious damage to Australia's protected environment. ACF also says the minister did not have enough detail about the gas the plant would process, because some of it would come from other projects that have not yet been approved. In March 2026, ACF added a new legal argument to its case, though the details have not been made public ACF.

Fara is a small volunteer group started around 2006. Its co-conveners are Judith Hugo OAM and Susan Swain. The group helped get the Murujuga area listed as a national heritage site in 2007. That listing is what required the North West Shelf project to be assessed under federal environment laws in the first place. Fara's case argues that pollution from the Karratha gas plant is already damaging the Murujuga petroglyphs. Petroglyphs are images carved into rock thousands of years ago. The Murujuga rock art site has over a million of them, some dating back 50,000 years, including the oldest known picture of a human face The Guardian.

Fara also says the minister did not properly identify the risks to the rock art. The group wants to see records of meetings between Minister Watt and Woodside to understand how the approval conditions were negotiated. Fara's court hearing is scheduled for 21–27 July 2026 in Melbourne. The group has also taken action in the Western Australian Supreme Court, where an application was heard in late May 2026 to expand its challenge FARA.

Both groups argue that the minister gave too much weight to the claimed economic benefits of the gas plant.

A United Nations official is also involved. Astrid Puentes Riaño, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, was allowed to join the case as an amicus curiae. That is a Latin term meaning "friend of the court" — someone who is not a party to the case but offers expertise to help the judge decide. The court approved her involvement on 14 July 2026 ACF. She is drawing on a July 2025 ruling by the International Court of Justice that said a healthy environment is a human right and that governments must prevent harm to the environment.

The broader context here is a growing tension between Australia's gas export industry and its duty to protect nature and cultural heritage. The International Court of Justice ruling is not legally binding, but it gives environmental advocates a set of principles they can point to in court. The involvement of a UN official in an Australian court case signals that the country's environmental approvals are being judged not just against Australian law, but against emerging international human rights standards too.

There is also a procedural question that could matter beyond this case. The gas plant would process gas from other projects that have not yet received their own approvals. If the court decides the minister should not have approved the extension without knowing exactly where the gas would come from, that could affect how future projects are assessed.

The two groups are using different legal approaches — one focused on climate emissions, the other on ancient rock art — but both want to show the minister's review was incomplete. If either group wins, the court would likely require the minister to reconsider the approval with more conditions or a wider review. That could delay a project Woodside expects to run for over 40 more years.

Fara's push to obtain meeting records between the minister and Woodside adds a question of transparency. If those records are released, they could show how much the approval conditions were shaped by direct discussions with the company rather than by the government's own assessment process.

The court's decisions, expected after this week's hearings, will be watched closely. The resources industry sees the North West Shelf extension as essential to keeping Australia's gas export capacity. Environmental and heritage groups see it as a test of whether fossil fuel projects approved to run for decades can hold up in court when measured against both Australian heritage laws and evolving international environmental standards.