The WA Government has quietly approved a groundwater extraction licence that would allow an overseas-based fracking company to take 100 million litres of groundwater each year.

While the state’s water department (DWER) approved Black Mountain Energy’s water licence on May 2, no public statement was issued, and the only way to find evidence of the licence’s approval is by searching the company’s Australian subsidiary, Bennett Resources, on the WA Government’s Water Register website.

The licence gives Black Mountain permission to access the groundwater for “the maintenance of unconventional gas wells, dust suppression, mining camp purposes, stock watering and rehabilitation purposes”.

However, the company’s “Valhalla” exploratory gas fracking project is still undergoing environmental assessment, and a public consultation process still needs to be conducted.

Dead duck in Buru Energy wastewater pond

If Valhalla is approved, Black Mountain would drill 20 exploration wells between 2 km and 4 km deep and hydraulically fracture them in up to 70 stages each. It would also require an additional two billion litres of groundwater.

Valhalla is also only an exploration project. Black Mountain’s website makes it clear the company wishes to expand to full scale production. If this occurs, it would require the drilling and fracking of many hundreds of wells. An export-scale project would also require a 1100km high-pressure gas pipeline to the Pilbara, processing facilities, pumping stations, flare stacks, and heavy-vehicle access roads. 

Mount Hardman Creek where Black Mountain oil and gas wants to drill and frack

Environs Kimberley Director of Strategy Martin Pritchard said, “If Black Mountain goes into full production with hundreds of wells, the volume of precious groundwater required would be unimaginable.

“This incremental threat of enormous levels of precious groundwater extraction shows why fracking must not be allowed to take-off in the Kimberley. 

“Fracking uses toxic chemicals that can pollute our clean water here in the Kimberley, why would we risk that?”

“Giving Black Mountain’s Valhalla Project the go ahead risks opening up the Kimberley to full-scale industrialisation by petroleum companies eager to get at the unconventional gas within the Canning Basin. This would ignite a carbon bomb, at a time when increasingly severe heat waves caused by the burning of fossil fuels and resulting climate change is putting the Kimberley at risk of becoming unliveable.”

Overflow at Buru Energy wastewater pond in the Kimberley

Read local media's reporting on the approval here.