Gas company Santos has ended its sponsorship of the Darwin Festival following a campaign by environmental activists and traditional owners.

The Northern Territory government's management of water could "run rivers dry" and risk the livelihoods of future generations, a traditional owner has said during a major water conference in Darwin this week.

For the first time, major industries in the Northern Territory will be charged for the water they use, in a policy shift the Environment Minister says is aimed at "bigger industries", not "small businesses and small farmers trying to make a go of it".

A group of Traditional Owners and environmentalists have hailed Origin Energy’s withdrawal from the Beetaloo Basin and the Kimberley.

A company facing fines for refusing to front a senate committee investigating gas subsidies has overnight become the biggest player in the Northern Territory's Beetaloo Basin.

What a difference six months makes. Before the federal election, the Beetaloo Basin in the Northern Territory was to have spearheaded Australia’s “gas-led recovery”.

Gas giant Origin Energy is abandoning plans to frack for gas in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin.

Origin Energy will sell its stake in its Beetaloo Basin gas project at a loss and review all its other exploration permits in a move that will distance it from an environmental controversy and end its association with sanctioned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

Origin Energy will divest its near-80 per cent stake in the Beetaloo Basin and explore exiting nearly all its upstream gas exploration permits as it accelerates its push to renewable energy.