barrow island

Home to our Gorgon and WA Oil operations, Barrow Island is a Class A Nature Reserve and the second largest island off the West Australian coast. Barrow Island has biological and ecological affinities with the neighbouring Pilbara bioregion and the Cape Range.

Barrow Island is home to the world’s largest non-government quarantine management system which has been recognised locally and globally as “best practice”. Strict quarantine measures implemented on the island since the 1960s have helped protect Barrow’s biodiversity.

Today, the Island’s 235 square kilometres of sparsely vegetated and arid landscape is a habitat for a variety of plants and animals – many of them endangered or rare on the mainland. Barrow Island is an important site of biological refuge because of its isolation from certain threatening processes occurring on the mainland.

Did you know?

On Barrow Island there are almost 400 species of plants, 13 terrestrial native mammal species, more than 110 bird species, 44 terrestrial reptile species, almost 4,000 species of terrestrial invertebrates, and 59 species of subterranean fauna. Our environmental specialists work hard to monitor key species and reduce environmental impacts.

WA oil operations

Since the first discovery of oil in 1964 and commencement of production in 1967, the Barrow Island oil field has yielded more than 335 million barrels of oil and delivered more than $1 billion in revenue to the Western Australian community.

The Barrow Island oil field lies beneath Barrow Island, located around 60 kilometres off the northwest coast of Western Australia, about 88 kilometres north of Onslow in the Carnarvon Basin. It is the largest oil field discovered in Western Australia.