North Rankin Complex, North West Shelf

North Rankin is an offshore platform in the North West Shelf Project, Australia's biggest gas project, off the coast of Western Australia. The platform, North Rankin A, was the first one built in the first phase of the project, which pulls natural gas and condensate (a light liquid fuel) from the Carnarvon Basin under the sea. The gas fields at North Rankin were found in the early 1970s.

Production has run since the 1980s. Gas is piped to land, processed at the Karratha Gas Plant on the Burrup Peninsula, then used in Western Australia or sold abroad as liquefied natural gas (LNG). The project is run by Woodside Energy for a group of partners.

A giant engineering project

Getting gas from under the sea was technically hard, and huge investments were needed before it became commercially worthwhile. The first phase included the North Rankin A platform, an undersea pipeline to Dampier and a pipeline for gas to Perth and Bunbury. The second phase built two LNG processing trains, storage tanks and ships. In the late 1980s it was the biggest engineering project in the world.

Impact and debate

The Karratha Gas Plant was commissioned in 1984. It supplies up to 15 percent of Western Australia's gas, with the rest exported. Building the plant on Murujuga, the Burrup Peninsula, destroyed about 5,000 sacred rock-art sites, and the project has faced opposition from the area's Traditional Owners. In September 2025 approval was given to extend operations to 2070, which has raised environmental and cultural concerns.

On the globe

Look for the ocean off the northwest coast of Western Australia, near Karratha.