The Managing Director's 2002 Environmental Award winners, comprised of employees at Woodside's Onshore Gas Plant at Karratha who worked on a project to reduce gas flaring, have nominated the projects.

The award includes $25,000 to be distributed among non-profit environmental projects. The Department of Conservation and Land Management has two successful projects receiving $4000, the turtle survey and a Hare Wallaby survey, while the Pilbara Wildlife Carers' Association will also receive $4000.

The Nickol Bay Naturalists Club will benefit from $13,000 towards the Miaree Pool information interpretive shelter project.

The flare reduction project was aimed at reducing flaring and greenhouse gas emissions from the Karratha Gas Plant and resulted in a sustainable yearly reduction in flaring equivalent to 140,525 tonnes of greenhouse gas.

The reductions were achieved by reviewing a number of operating procedures and setting performance targets with daily monitoring and implementing an awareness campaign. Changes were made to the operating procedure for LNG start-up; re-routing Domgas compressor seal gas to fuel gas rather than flare.

Reduced flaring during LNG ship loading was achieved by ramping back LNG production and producing colder LNG two hours prior to ship loading. This creates capacity in the Boil-off gas compressors and the vapour return from cooling down the ships can be routed to fuel gas rather than flare.

Standardisation of ship operations during loading and a change in the ship loading procedure to increase ship tank pressure during loading also reduced the amount of boil off gas produced.