Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority reveals new licence condition for Santos LNG tanks following methane leak
Santos will not be forced fix a 20-year-old methane leak at its Darwin tank facilities, but will have to actively monitor and disclose the scale of the greenhouse gas emissions under a new licence. See why environmentalists say this is a ‘license to pollute’.
Santos will not be forced to fix a ‘super emitter’ methane leak at its Darwin liquified natural gas facilities as the environmental regulator greenlights the project under new monitoring and reporting conditions.
On Friday the Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority confirmed the tanks licence would be extended for another five years under an amended licence requiring greater transparency about the emissions from a known 20-year-old design fault.
Earlier this month Environment Centre NT revealed multiple government agencies were aware the liquefied natural gas facility — 13km from Darwin — had been leaking methane for almost two decades.
Documents obtained under a Freedom of Information request exposed the owners of the Wickham Point gas site first detected the LNG tank was releasing between 68 and 184kg of gas per hour in 2019-2020, with the breach due to a design fault from 2006.
ECNT executive director Kirsty Howey said this rate of release would be considered a “super emitter event by international standards”.
It was estimated the accidental release was the equivalent of 1 per cent of the Santos facility’s total annual greenhouse emissions.
On Friday the NTEPA announced it would amend and renew the licence for a five-year period, on the condition Santos “prevent and manage fugitive methane emissions to a level that is as low as reasonably practicable and acceptable to the NT EPA”.
This also included conditions Santos implement a leak detection and repair program, monitor fugitive methane emissions and report on the results in its Annual Environmental Monitoring Report.
The final condition was to establish a Community Consultative Committee to share information with the community “to ensure timely and open communication on matters of interest to the community about the facility and its operations”.
Santos previously maintained the facility was safe, was regulated by NT WorkSafe and operated under an approved safety case.
“During the Darwin Life Extension project, Santos and independent third-party experts conducted a comprehensive inspection program of the tank and confirmed that it remains fit and safe for service for the life of the Barossa gas project,” a Santos spokesman said earlier this month.
Santos has been contacted for further comment.
On Friday, Dr Howey condemned the EPA for failing to make repairing the gas leak a condition of the five-year licence renewal.
“The NTEPA should have taken the commonsense approach to make Santos fix the leak while the tank is empty,” she said.
“This is just giving Santos another licence to pollute... Essentially the regulator is saying there is no consequences for super emitters.
“Our message has not changed. Santos must fix the leak, and the Albanese Government must fix this problem, so it never happens again.
“Our environmental regulator has failed, and today Territorians are asking themselves how much we can really trust decisions made about other high-risk projects.”
Following the exposure of the leak, both the NT EPA and the national Clean Energy Regulator have come under fire for not disclosing it or requiring any action to be taken, with Dr Howey accusing both agencies of “buck passing”.
The fault was reported to the NT Environment Protection Agency in May 2020, with other reports to NT WorkSafe and federal bodies, the Clean Energy Regulator, National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, and CSIRO.
A CER spokesman said it only had the power to ensure emissions were correctly accounted for under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting scheme, but “we do not have any powers to require companies to repair leaks”.
Earlier this month NTEPA chair Paul Vogel said the leak was not reported to the public because at these levels they did not pose any risk of explosion and negligible risk to human health or the environment.
However on Friday a spokesman acknowledged there was a need for the new licence to “improve oversight of fugitive emissions management, community engagement and transparency”.
The NTEPA spokesman also highlighted Dr Vogel did not participate in the discussion and decision on the licence renewal.
Last week it was revealed the EPA boss was also a paid consultant for the lobbying group, Purple, which has consulted for gas giant INPEX which owns a stake in the Darwin LNG plant.
Dr Vogel denied there was any conflict of interest in his role as chair and NT Environment Minister Josh Burgoyne said he stood by him.
Dr Vogel said he had not done any any commercial work with Purple for the past 18 months, but in the past had provided specialist consulting services to the Western Australian firm “on an ad hoc basis”.
“I have never provided advice to any of Purple’s clients that the NT EPA regulates in the NT, nor have I been requested to do so.”
The new licence comes the day after the United Arab Emirates-government backed XRG-led consortium withdrew its $36bn offer to takeover Santos.
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Originally published as Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority reveals new licence condition for Santos LNG tanks following methane leak
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