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“We cannot help but feel Meg O’Neill deserves more courtesy than the timing of the situation has allowed for,” he said.

However, Mr Kavonic said the situation did not necessarily mean Woodside’s CEO search was encountering problems. “If anything, it may indicate the board has line of sight to an external candidate already,” he said.

More than 200 shareholders and guests attended Woodside’s annual meeting in Perth on Thursday. They were met by a strong security presence after a climate-focused protest at Woodside’s headquarters earlier in the day.

Woodside and rival Santos, which also had its annual meeting on Thursday, both received a grilling about climate change and faced motions requesting greater disclosures of how their expansion plans were aligned with efforts to slow global warming.

The motions also called for details of how and when they would wind up oil and gas operations, rehabilitate sites, and support affected workers.

At Santos’s meeting, the push was overwhelmingly opposed, with 13 per cent of investors voting in favour. However, climate activist group Market Forces, which prepared the resolutions, said the level of support reflected “considerable” opposition to expanding fossil fuels.

“All coal, oil and gas producers must take note: investors are increasingly willing to demand drastic action to align with global climate goals,” Market Forces’ Will van de Pol said.

Santos chairman Keith Spence said Santos had no intention of closing its oil and gas operations. He said the company had a strong future as a supplier of LNG and potentially hydrogen, while using carbon capture and storage to bury emissions generated in production and nature-based offsets to neutralise its carbon footprint.

Woodside said it was aiming for net-zero emissions by 2050, including a 30 per cent reduction in its direct emissions by the end of this decade.

Mr Goyder said Woodside believed its net emissions have peaked and will be declining, “barring any major new acquisitions”.

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While investors are increasingly concerned about the gas industry’s emissions and are questioning the role of gas in a decarbonising world, LNG producers and many analysts believe gas demand will remain resilient for a long time. They say natural gas will be the vital “transition fuel” in the shift to cleaner energy, due to its ability to displace heavier-emitting coal-fired power while also backing up wind and solar generators in periods when weather conditions are unfavourable.