Giovanni Torre - November 28, 2022
Traditional Owners from the Beetaloo Basin fear new Northern Territory legislation will create “production by stealth”, sidestepping requirements to consult and secure agreements with native title holders for full-scale industrial development on their country, by allow fracking companies to mine and sell gas at scale for up to 15 years at the exploration stage.
Lawyers for Nurrdalinji Native Title Aboriginal Corporation have written to Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles asking her to reconsider the Petroleum Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 which will allow holders of an exploration permit to produce, use or sell fracked gas at the exploration stage.
The Bill has been condemned for enabling the gas industry to produce gas at an unlimited volume for up to 15 years without the need to negotiate with Aboriginal people and pastoralists, or to undertake environmental and other checks usually required before obtaining a production licence.
Nurrdalinji Aboriginal Corporation chair, Gudanji-Wambaya man and jungai (cultural lawman), Johnny Wilson, said his community was “shocked that the government has changed the rules to allow gas companies to do large scale mining on our country without our consent”.
“As early as 2004, when exploration agreements were first made, our old people were told there’d be wells the size of billy cans. Gas companies didn’t explain what fracking is or the damage it can do to our water, sacred sites, plants and animals. We now know there’ll be four to five hundred wells and pipelines running across our country,” he said.
Mr Wilson, who lives at Lightning Ridge outstation, said exploration agreements which had been signed by people very little information are now set to become “the hook, line and sinker” for large-scale industrialisation and production.
“Gas companies in the Northern Territory have never done the right thing by Aboriginal people but now they have lent on the government to allow them to ignore us even more,” he said.