Federal Court of Australia overturns Beetaloo Basin fracking grant

A $21 million Beetaloo Basin fracking grant has been overturned by the Federal Court of Australia.

A RUSHED $21m Beetaloo Basin fracking grant has been overturned after finding the government acted “unreasonably” in approving the deal.

The Federal Court of Australia declared on Thursday that three grants from the Commonwealth Government and Empire Energy, which owns Imperial Oil and Gas, were invalid.

The contracts, which were approved in September, aimed to explore three new wells in the gas basin, 500km southeast of Darwin. When the project was announced the Commonwealth government said it would accelerate development in the area.

The Environment Centre NT challenged the tender in July, arguing the federal government did not make “reasonable inquiries” into the impacts of climate change and related risks from the fracking projects.

Justice John Griffiths found the government was “unreasonable in the legal sense” after a delegate for the minister signed the grants after the court challenge was made, instead of waiting for the legal case to resolve.

“It contended that there was no evident and intelligible justification for the timing of the contracts decision,” Justice Griffiths said.

He said while climate concerns were at the “heart” of the environmentalist’s challenge, the contracts were voided over the jurisdictional errors.

Justice Griffiths said the case did raise significant environmental concerns, but did not outline why the Imperial contract specifically was responsible for the climate-change threat.

“The expert evidence indicates that, as global warming worsens, the risks of passing irreversible tipping points grows and every fraction of a degree of additional climate warming increases the harm,” Justice Griffiths warned.

He said burning just 10 per cent of the gas within the Beetaloo Basin would double Australia’s current annual emissions.

But Justice Griffiths rejected that federal Resources Minister Keith Pitt should have considered the risks of increasing greenhouse gas emissions when he made the grants.