Oil and gas company theatens to sue individual activists
Australia's largest oil and gas company, Woodside Energy is threatening to pursue individual activists for financial damages after a stink bomb was set off inside the company's Perth headquarters by activists last month.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 So it was back in June, a number of activists from the climate protesting group called Disrupt
00:07 Bar a Pub set off a stink bomb inside the headquarters of Woodside in Perth.
00:13 And it was designed to mimic the smell of a toxic gas leak, essentially.
00:18 So what happened was that Woodside had to evacuate its building.
00:22 They didn't know what was happening.
00:24 And I guess now they want to be compensated for it.
00:27 So what are the activists saying about it?
00:29 So after the stink bomb hoax, I guess, police actually charged the activists.
00:35 So they're all criminally charged now.
00:38 But two months later, the company Woodside said, no, we want to be financially compensated.
00:44 Please release identifying information of all the activists that were involved potentially
00:52 in this hoax, because we want to go after all of you in civil action.
00:57 Now these kinds of civil lawsuits are extremely unusual.
01:01 You can imagine Woodside is one of, well, is Australia's biggest oil and gas company,
01:06 as you said, going through individual protesters.
01:10 There is a similar case ongoing at the moment in Queensland and another one, the famous
01:15 guns case in Tasmania that was in 2005, where a company again went after climate activists,
01:23 but very unusual in Australia.
01:26 What else is Woodside saying about the case?
01:28 So Woodside is not really commenting because it's saying criminal proceedings are on foot
01:33 and it doesn't want to say anything about that.
01:35 But previously did comment on activism, saying that it's not acceptable for activists to
01:42 go after company employees in this way.
01:44 [BLANK_AUDIO]