The Federal Court has temporarily banned oil and gas company Santos from starting pipeline works on its $US4.7 billion Barossa project.
The Federal Court has temporarily banned oil and gas company Santos from starting pipeline works on its $US4.7 billion Barossa project.
The court today granted an interim injunction to prevent Santos from starting to lay its pipeline until November 13, the company announced.
Tiwi traditional owner Simon Munkara, represented by Environmental Defenders Office, this week launched legal action against Santos NA Barossa Pty Ltd in the Federal Court’s Victoria registry.
Mr Munkara alleged laying the gas export pipeline would impact the submerged Tiwi cultural heritage and create environmental risks.
Santos’s gas project sits within the Barossa Field of the Timor Sea, about 300 kilometres off the coast of Darwin and 138km north of the Tiwi Islands.
A statement from the Environmental Defenders Office said work should stop until Santos submitted a revised environment plan.
In a statement after the court decision, Santos said its environment plan had been accepted by regulator National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority in March 2020.
“Santos has complied with a general direction issued by the regulator NOPSEMA in January 2023 in relation to impacts on underwater cultural heritage places to which Indigenous people have spiritual and cultural connections,” the statement said.
“An independent expert anthropologist concluded there were no such underwater cultural heritage places, following interviews with around 170 Tiwi people and extensive archaeological and anthropological literature and studies.
“These studies included consideration of independent expert archaeological, geological and sedimentological assessment of the pipeline route.”
Santos said it would continue to defend the proceedings and claimed it had updated its environmental plan after the independent expert results.
“As announced to the ASX earlier this week, Santos respects the cultural heritage of the Tiwi people and while we appreciate there are a range of views, Santos has complied in full with the requirements of the general direction as stipulated by the regulator, NOPSEMA,” the company said.
“The regulator has monitored this compliance throughout.
“The pipelay vessel will hold in Darwin and no pipelay activity linked to the [gas export pipeline] will be undertaken during the interim injunction.
“Guidance on Barossa cost and schedule remains unchanged.
“Santos will assess any impact on the schedule and cost of the Barossa Gas Project if the injunction is extended beyond November 13 2023 and will update the market accordingly.”
In September 2022, the Federal Court overturned NOPSEMA’s approval of Santos’s environmental plan for offshore drilling at Barossa.
It comes after Tiwi traditional owner and elder Dennis Murphy Tipakalippa claimed the Munupi clan and seven other groups on the island were not properly consulted on the project.
The EDO said Mr Munkara would argue Santos had not properly assessed submerged cultural heritage along the route of the Barossa export pipeline and that the company was relying on an environmental plan that NOPSEMA approved in 2020.
