DIAMOND hopeful Mig Resources has gone to the Federal Court seeking to overturn a decision to block its access to part of the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf in favour of an interstate gas pipeline proposed by Japanese company Inpex.
Mig is owned by Grant Bennett, a descendant of iron ore magnate Peter Wright, and Igor Prosin, a former director of Cambridge Gulf Exploration, which originally searched for diamonds in the area.
Mig has taken the Commonwealth Western Australia Offshore Minerals Joint Authority to court after being told in April it had not been granted two of the four leases it sought.
The joint authority oversees exploration and extraction for leases that cross the boundary between the state’s coastal dominion and the Commonwealth’s offshore jurisdiction.
The authority is managed by the Department of Mines and Petroleum and is the joint responsibility of the relevant state minister, Norman Moore, and his federal counterpart, Minister for Resources and Energy Martin Ferguson.
The department confirmed Mr Moore would be defending the joint authority’s decision in the Federal Court on August 10.
The area in question, a part of the gulf extending out from between the mouths of the Berkeley and Ord rivers, has previously been the subject of diamond hunts – initially in the early 1990s by Cambridge Gulf, which ended controversially after some exploration success, and in the past decade by Bonaparte Diamonds.
Mig applied in June 2009 to explore the area again.
Mig’s strategy was to avoid West African exploration techniques that were susceptible to the big tidal activity and to also concentrate on an ancient lake into which several rivers flowed between 18,000 and 22,000 years ago. The former lake now sits in an area covered by the gulf.
In its application before the court, Mig claims it is aggrieved because about two years lapsed between its application and that of Inpex, yet the Japanese company was awarded a pipeline licence through nearly 70 kilometres of the lease area Mig sought, including the paleolake.
Mig claims the joint authority had stated that in reaching its decision it had considered the economic benefits of the pipeline to the Northern Territory and Australia as a whole.
Inpex had planned to develop the Ichthys LNG plant in WA but, after approval delays under the former state Labor government, it decided instead to pipe the gas from the Browse basin, off Broome, to Darwin.
Mig has claimed a breach of natural justice or, alternatively, an improper exercise of power has occurred in connection with the joint authority’s decision to refuse it the leases.
