Woodside Pluto Carbon Offset Project - Stage 1

Woodside Pluto Carbon Offset Project - Stage 1 is an environmental mallee planting project with land parcels located in the Parkes local government area, approximately 350km west-northwest of Sydney in New South Wales, alongside additional sites in Western Australia. It was registered in June 2013. While the specific area for Stage 1 is currently suppressed on the public register, it forms part of a broader 17,125-hectare initiative implemented across 27 properties in NSW and WA.

Environmental and mallee planting projects involve establishing permanent plantings of native tree species on land that was previously cleared and used for agricultural purposes. Under this methodology, trees are planted at a density and arrangement designed to achieve a permanent forest cover. For this project, the chosen species is Eucalyptus polybractea, commonly known as blue mallee, which is well-suited to the landscape.

The Parkes region is well known for its agricultural land use, predominantly consisting of broadacre cropping alongside sheep and cattle grazing. The area features a temperate to semi-arid climate with moderate rainfall. Soils across the region typically consist of red-brown earths, clay loams, and sandy loams, which perfectly support the drought-tolerant characteristics of mallee eucalypts.

This project was established by Woodside Energy in partnership with CO2 Australia as part of a major bio-sequestration initiative. The planting program was originally designed to offset reservoir carbon dioxide emissions from Woodside's Pluto LNG Facility, representing an early large-scale corporate investment into Australian biological carbon sequestration. In August 2024, the project underwent a variation to transition from the older 2013 Reforestation and Afforestation methodology to the updated 2014 Environmental or Mallee Plantings (FullCAM) methodology.