“Woodside’s own figures estimate the Scarborough project alone will produce 28 million tonnes of Scope 3 emissions,” Market Forces chief executive Will van de Pol said.

Woodside has a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, but faced a shareholder revolt in 2022 when 49 per cent of investors at its annual general meeting voted against the company’s climate efforts as inadequate in a non-binding poll. Woodside’s climate action plan, detailing how it will operate in a carbon-constrained future, will be put to a vote again this year, while Woodside chairman Richard Goyder will also be up for re-election.

The release of Woodside’s updated climate goals on Tuesday came as the company posted a steep fall in full-year profit on the back of a downturn in global fossil fuel prices.

Prices for one-off LNG sales in Asia had soared to unseen levels in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine deepened a historic energy crisis and unleashed a global scramble for spare shipments of the super-chilled fuel. However, prices retreated in 2023 as the supply crunch eased and China’s weaker-than-expected economic recovery weighed on energy demand.

Woodside’s bottom-line profit of $US1.6 billion ($2.5 billion) for 2023 was just a quarter of what it earned the prior year. The result was dragged down by a 30 per cent fall in prices of its oil and gas, and writedowns at its Shenzi project in the Gulf of Mexico and the Wheatstone LNG project in Western Australia.

Stripping out one-off costs, Woodside’s underlying earnings were 37 per cent lower, beating market analysts’ forecasts. The company announced a final dividend of US60¢ a share, down from the $1.44 declared for 2022.

Suhas Nayak, a portfolio manager Allan Gray, which owns Woodside shares, said the dividend was better than had been expected. “It was also good to see a strong balance sheet, which is about to get even stronger because of the sell-down in Scarborough,” he said.

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Commonwealth Bank mining and energy commodities strategist Vivek Dhar on Tuesday said LNG prices were now at their lowest levels in nearly four years, trading below $US8.50 per million British thermal units, after reaching as high as $US18.60 in October.

He said Europe had emerged as a key driver of LNG markets following the onset of war in Ukraine because European nations needed to buy up LNG to compensate for lower pipeline gas from Russia.

This year’s LNG price falls mirrored the decline in European gas futures contracts due to healthy stockpiles, he said.

“Storage [in Europe] is currently tracking at approximately 64 per cent of capacity, well above the five‑year average (2019 to 2023) of approximately 47 per cent for this time of year,” Dhar said