Top End snatches $24bn gas plant prize from under the West's nose

Weekend Australian
Saturday 27/9/2008 Page: 2

ONE of the biggest private investments in Australian history was clinched yesterday when Japanese gas giant Inpex chose Darwin harbour as the site for a multi-billion dollar LNG plant that will process eight million tonnes of gas piped from the
Browse Basin off the northern West Australian coast.

The announcement that Inpex planned to pipe gas 850km across the Timor Sea in favour of processing the LNG at a hub in the Kimberley ended months of competition between the the NT and Western Australia. The deal cements Darwin's status as a major industrial and commercial centre, but WA's loss was greeted with bitter disappointment by the Kimberley's Aboriginal Land Council, which had pinned its hopes on the plant as a way of out of poverty for remote-living indigenous people.

Inpex's Japanese president Naoki Kuroda, announcing the deal in Darwin yesterday, said that at the expected gas processing rate of 1.6 million tonnes of LNG per annum, the plant would produce the equivalent of 50 per cent of Australia's current LPG production. Mr Kuroda said the NT Government had been able to provide certainty for the $24 billion investment, with the Japanese Government pushing to meet a tight deadline to guarantee the security of Japan's future gas supply.

Federal Minister for Resources and Energy Martin Ferguson said yesterday the investment was "potentially the biggest investment in Australia's history" and would cement Australia's world standing as an "energy superpower". "It will prove to be side by side with the expansion of the Olympic Dam in South Australia," he said. Chief Minister Paul Henderson who used the gas plant as the excuse to call an election 11 months early in the Territory said the project would deliver $50 billion to the NT economy over 20 years and would bring 2300 jobs. An eight-week public consultation process would begin after Inpex lodged an environmental impact statement, Mr Henderson said.

"We have today taken a giant step forward in terms of underpinning the future of the Territory's economic prosperity and diversifying our economy," he said. But a spokeswoman for the indigenous Larrakia Nation, Donna Jackson, said the gas plant development would threaten archaeological sites and an Aboriginal dreaming track. There had been no consultation with the community on the environmental and cultural ramifications of the plant, she said.

"I am really, really disappointed," Ms Jackson said. "I am astounded at how easily things are rubber-stamped in this town." West Australian Premier Colin Barnett said he was not surprised by Inpex's decision and labelled it an example of "appalling project management" by the former Labor government in WA. He said the project's greenhouse gas emissions would be increased by 20 per cent because the gas would have to be piped 850km from the Browse Basin to Darwin. "I find it quite extraordinary that the federal Government is supporting a project that significantly increases greenhouse gas emissions." he said.