Regulator did not consult Tiwi Islander traditional owners over Santos gas project, court hears
The offshore gas regulator failed to recognise Tiwi Islander traditional owners as interested parties who needed to be consulted on a massive gas project, a court has been told.
Tiwi Islander Dennis Tipakalippa, from the Munupi clan, is fighting the regulator’s decision to allow Santos to drill eight wells in the Barossa gas field, 265km north-west of Darwin.
The regulator had material to show the Munupi people were relevant and interested parties who needed to be consulted on the project, Mr Tipakalippa’s barrister, Claire Harris QC, told the federal court sitting in Darwin.
The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority also had information to show Santos did not consult directly with the traditional owners, Harris told the court on Wednesday.
The law requires companies to identify a project’s interested parties and consult with the groups on how it would manage any risks to the environment.
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It was clear the Munupi people were relevant stakeholders in the Barossa project, Harris said.
“Their relationship to the land and sea readily falls within the concept of an interest,” the barrister told the court.
“Those kinds of interests are well known to the courts.”
Santos should have given the Munupi people and other Tiwi Islander traditional owners all of the relevant information so they could provide appropriate feedback, Harris told the court.
The barrister argued the groups were only given a map of the project area that did not detail its proximity to the Tiwi Islands.
The federal court on Tuesday was told Santos contacted the Tiwi Land Council about the Barossa project several times via email between 2018 and 2022.
But the council was not a representative body of the Tiwi Islander traditional owners so the company could not rely on that correspondence to show the Indigenous people were consulted, Harris said.
Even if the council represented the owners, the barrister said the emails lacked substantial information about Santos’s plans to drill eight wells in the gas field.
Santos, which is Australia’s secondlargest independent gas producer, has said it would “vigorously defend” the Barossa project, and that it had all necessary approvals after consultation with stakeholders.
The US$3.6bn (A$5.2bn) offshore natural gas development is expected to create up to 600 jobs and pipe gas 280km to the Darwin LNG facility, with
first production expected in 2025.
The company said the project, which it bought from ConocoPhillips in 2020, is 43% complete and on schedule.
The drilling that is the subject of the court case started in July.
Lawyers for Santos begin their closing arguments on Thursday.