The NT government had to scramble to update its fracking website after announcement

Critics are building a case against the NT government, saying it has failed to implement fracking recommendations. Meanwhile, the fracking website has had an urgent change.

The NT government has belatedly updated its fracking website to more accurately reflect the recommendations of the fracking report it released Wednesday morning.

Minutes before Chief Minister Natasha Fyles released the Final Implementation Report into the Scientific Inquiry into Hydraulic Fracturing, the fracking website showed the government had not met key recommendations from its own report into on-shore gas.

When the report was released it claimed 100 per cent of recommendations from the government’s own Pepper Inquiry into hydraulic fracturing had been implemented.

This was in contrast to the government fracking implementation website that showed only 75 per cent of the Pepper recommendations had been introduced.

The NT News understands the website was updated early afternoon.

Meanwhile, as east-coast Australians labour under soaring energy prices in part because of a lack of supply, interstate critics are lining up to attack the Territory for approving fracking.

The Australia Institute today published a full-page advertisement signed by almost 100 prominent Australians calling for the NT government to scrap fracking.

The Environmental Defenders Office claimed the government had implemented less than half the recommendations of the Pepper Inquiry.

Charles Darwin University researchers checked water samples taken from underground aquatic systems at potential fracking sites at the Beetaloo Sub-basin and Roper River region to test for stygofauna.

A summary report prepared by the EDO said the government was “not and cannot be” in a position to sign off on all the fracking inquiries recommendations.

Key recommendations it says have not been met include failure to implement a federal water trigger and recommendation 9.8 demanding a guarantee by federal and NT governments there would be no net increase in greenhouse gases.

EDO special counsel Alina Leikin said the NT government’s failure was a “dark cloud” over the Beetaloo project.

“The government made a promise that it wouldn’t detonate the carbon bomb in the Beetaloo unless every single fracking inquiry recommendation was implemented,” Ms Leikin said.

“Our work shows the NT government has no basis to claim the recommendations have been implemented, when promised federal water protections are not in place and cultural heritage assessments and consultation process for Traditional Owners fall short.

NT’s Beetaloo-Basin is one of the nation’s emerging on-shore gas precincts.

“It’s telling that the NT government’s own independent Oversight Adviser has acknowledged that crucial recommendations about community legal rights to challenge fracking approvals are inadequate.”

The Beetaloo Sub-basin south of Darwin is one of the nation’s emerging on-shore gas precincts.

After winning government in 2016, the Labor Party introduced a moratorium on fracking pending the outcomes of the Pepper Inquiry into the practice.

When the report was released in March 2018, the government promised to implement all 135 recommendations.

Last updated in August 2022, the fracking implementation website identifies a number of recommendations that have not been fully implemented.

Recommendation 5.5b, that the absence of any treatment and disposal facilities in the NT for wastewater and brines produced by the gas industry be addressed as a matter of priority, has been 75 per cent implemented.

Recommendation 7.2 that the government introduces a charge on water for all onshore shale gas activities is only 50 per cent implemented, according to the NTG website.

The website shows 103 Pepper recommendations (75 per cent) have been implemented and 35 have commenced.