Western Australia’s renowned Kimberley region is under a new threat from the oil and gas industry ten years after fossil fuel giant Woodside pulled out of building gas refineries at James Price Point.
US-based oil and gas company Black Mountain Energy, via subsidiary Bennett Resources Ltd, has referred its ‘Valhalla’ fracking project to the Federal Minister for a decision on whether Commonwealth assessment is required.
The project would be the largest ‘tight gas’ fracking proposal in Australia and bigger than the two current fracking projects in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin.
Mount Hardman Creek which flows into the Martuwarra Fitzroy River. Oil and gas fracking is proposed less than 1km away from the creek. Photo: Martin Pritchard.
The project entails the drilling and fracking of an initial twenty wells in the Martuwarra Fitzroy River catchment in the central Kimberley. The Martuwarra Fitzroy River was National Heritage listed in 2011 by then Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke.
Black Mountain Energy, owned by US oil and gas fracking mogul Rhett Bennett, has previously released plans to build a pipeline from its frack wells to Woodside’s LNG refineries in the Pilbara. A pipeline would require at least 1,200 gas wells to underpin the development.
Recent analysis by climate scientists shows there could be 8,700 oil and gas in a large-scale development across the Kimberley (Climate Analytics, 2024).
Kimberley community protest against Black Mountain. Photo: Alex Westover.
This is the second time Black Mountain has referred the proposal - the first referral, just six months ago, was for only six wells. Given their referral to the WA EPA had twenty wells, we believe the company was told by the Commonwealth to resubmit the full project, not a component of it. Over 3,000 people called for the first 6 well proposal to be assessed.
Conservation group Environs Kimberley is calling on the Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to undertake a full environmental assessment of the proposal under the Commonwealth EPBC Act.
Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has the power to assess the proposal under the EPBC Act including the potential significant impacts of the proposed fracking on vital groundwater, listed threatened species and the West Kimberley National Heritage area (including Martuwarra Fitzroy River).
“The whole fracking process – which would involve landclearing of threatened species habitat, extracting large volumes of water risking groundwater-dependent ecosystems and the use of carcinogenic chemicals potentially polluting the National Heritage listed Martuwarra Fitzroy River – means that Minister Plibersek must make sure there’s a proper environmental assessment of this proposal,” Acting Environs Kimberley CEO Martin Pritchard said.
The referral will be another test of the Commonwealth’s “water trigger” which has yet to be invoked by Minister Plibersek.
“If a project proposing to take 2 billion litres of clean groundwater in a seasonally arid region like the Kimberley doesn’t require assessment by Minister Plibersek then what would?” Mr Pritchard asked.
“This industrialisation threat to the Kimberley would have a much greater impact on the environment than the James Price Point proposal Woodside withdrew in 2013," he said.
“To turn the Kimberley into US style oil and gas fields would be a disaster and fracking would not only scar the world’s most intact landscape but create greenhouse gas pollution on a global scale.”
You can stop help stop Black Mountain from fracking the Kimberley here.
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