Goyder appeals to Woodside shareholders to back climate plan

Woodside is spruiking its financial returns in a last-minute letter to investors ahead of a vote next week on its plans for climate change and the future of chair Richard Goyder.

Goyder wrote to shareholders on Tuesday extolling the growth of Australia’s largest oil and gas company under his six years of leadership after it bought BHP’s petroleum assets and highlighting the strong flow of dividends they have received in the past two years.

Richard Goyder says he has never been more energised or excited to lead the Woodside board.

“This amounts to $US7.5 billion ($11.2 billion) distributed to our shareholders, representing an average dividend yield of nine per cent,” he said.

The returns were boosted by sky-high gas prices after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. Prices have since returned to more normal levels.

Goyder, who also chairs Qantas and the AFL Commission, pushed back on calls for the $57 billion company to drastically change its strategy as it risked “eroding value for all shareholders and contributing to a disorderly energy transition”.

He said Woodside’s board believed its plans were aligned with the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global heating well below 2 degrees and to try to limit the rise to 1.5 degrees.

Environmental groups have slammed Woodside for developing large new fossil fuel assets, including the Scarborough gas field off the WA coast and the Trion oil project in Mexico. Modelling from the International Energy Agency in 2021 found that in order to limit global heating rises to 1.5 degrees, no new oil and gas fields could be developed for the world.

The appeal to the back pocket comes after three of the four biggest proxy houses that guide investors on how to vote – CGI Glass Lewis, Institutional Shareholder Service (ISS) and the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors – recommended Woodside’s climate plan be rejected.

CGI Glass Lewis also backs a vote against Goyder’s re-election as chair at Woodside’s annual general meeting in Perth on April 24.

The vote on the climate plan is not binding, but a rejection would be humiliating for the company after it spent two years engaging with major shareholders on the hot topic. Its previous climate plan was voted down by 49 per cent of shareholders.

Woodside’s plans for its Scope 3 emissions – the greenhouse gases released when customers burn or process its oil and gas – have also fallen short of some investors’ expectations on how the equivalent of 73 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year should be dealt with.

A target to pursue lower-carbon products or carbon capture technologies that could abate five million tonnes of emissions a year by 2030 has been welcomed, but there are concerns the returns would be too low to justify the investment.

“Its business plan is to continue the production of oil and gas without near-term, meaningful development of lower-carbon services,” said ISS.

Goyder told shareholders the climate plan was a well-considered and realistic pathway that was clear about Woodside’s plans to reduce risks to the company from climate change.

“We are being honest about the energy transition,” he said.

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