Woodside offers rock art study scholarship.


One of Australia's largest energy companies is to fund a three-year study into rock art on the Burrup Peninsula in north-west Western Australia.
The announcement comes amid controversy over whether the Burrup should be heritage-listed, which could affect Woodside Energy's application to develop an LNG processing plant at the site.
The University of New England, in New South Wales, says Woodside will fund a postgraduate scholarship for study of the carvings.
The company says the research will be as open as any other form of university research, and it will not try to influence the outcome.
Greens' Senator Rachel Siewert has welcomed the research, but says she is sceptical of the company's motives.
"Further work is needed to be done on the Burrup," she said.
"However, for Woodside to come out and fund this as some way of trying to ameliorate the fact that they are going to destroy rock art does not wash with me.
"They're trying to make a bad situation look better ... rock art will be destroyed by the proposal that they want to build on Burrup. Those are the facts and Woodside funding the study does not get around those facts."
Senator Siewert says she feels the scholarship is a PR exercise.
"They'll have a better understanding of the art that they destroy. It will not save the art," she said.
"Their proposal destroys rock art, that's the basic facts."