Unblocking the gas pipeline

After years of delays, final approval for Santos’ $5.8bn Barossa gas project and pipeline in the Timor Sea is a welcome development but the experience stands as a stark warning of our national capacity to tolerate economic self-harm. If there is a positive to be drawn from the Barossa experience it is that project developers were able to expose the nefarious legal tactics being employed to stifle resource developments.

The Environmental Defenders Office has been ordered to pay Santos more than $9m in costs after launching a failed bid to scuttle development of the gas field and associated 262km underwater pipeline near the Tiwi ­Islands on Indigenous cultural grounds. In a scathing judgment, the Federal Court found the claim was based on a “distorted and manipulated” assertion that the pipeline would disturb the travels of a rainbow serpent sacred to the Tiwi Islanders. As a result, the Barossa development is back on track to create 350 jobs with an estimated $2.5bn worth of wages and contracts to the Northern Territory across the next 20 years.

But we must not lose sight of the sovereign risk that exists for any company that wants to spend the billions of dollars necessary to bring big projects from the drawing board into reality. With the Greens campaigning hard to stop any future gas or coal developments, this is something of particular significance as Australians prepare to go to the polls on May 3.