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Seeing NT chief minister Lia Finocchiaro and Federal Resources minister Madeline King posing with big smiles to turn the tap on for the first fracked gas sales from the Beetaloo Basin is an appalling sight. It is jarring to watch them line up to promote their support of fracking, despite over a decade of community opposition, and the knowledge that the unfolding climate catastrophe requires us to stop opening up new fossil fuel projects immediately.
Despite this being a grim milestone, it is important not to take the carefully calculated hype too literally. In reality, all that actually happened is that Tamboran’s pilot project was connected to the Darwin/Katherine grid, meaning that some gas is now flowing from the Beetaloo Basin into it. This is absolutely significant - every frack is putting our water and climate at risk - but it’s also far from the “game over, all systems go” that the frackers and the Finocchiaro government want you to believe. In fact, the two fracking pilot projects underway - from Tamboran and Beetaloo Energy Australia - will basically saturate the demand for gas within the NT itself.To become commercially viable and to grow, the frackers need access to export markets, which means finding billions of dollars to build massive, expensive and risky pipelines to either Darwin or the East Coast. Or they need massive data centres to be approved, financed and permitted to be powered by fracked gas. Whichever way frackers try to go, none of that is happening soon. |
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Despite Lia Finocchiaro making the outrageous statement this week that those opposed to fracking are “not welcome here” and should “go back to where they came from”, the community opposition to fracking remains strong and continues to grow! We reckon the Chief Minister gets so riled up about this issue because she knows we have a point! Despite banging on about the “economic boom” that fracking will bring, let’s not forget that this first pilot project only got off the ground because the NT Government signed secret contracts to buy this gas at undisclosed prices. NT taxpayers are being forced to prop up this risky industry with billions of dollars through our power bills and taxes. Whether and how this industry becomes commercially viable is still completely up in the air. This week has been tough for everyone concerned about fracking and the future of our environment, but it is not the end, by any stretch.
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