Northern Territory Pipeline to Contention Was Rigged From the Start
For Traditional Owners across the Northern Territory, the latest push to fast-track Beetaloo Basin gas to the east coast isn’t just another chapter in Australia’s long fossil-fuel saga—it’s a rerun. Same script, same ending, different decade.
Communities from the Barkly to Borroloola have warned for years that fracking the Beetaloo risks water contamination, cultural damage, and worsening climate extremes in a region already feeling the heat.
Add to that century-old law that still denies many First Nations people meaningful land and water rights, and the picture becomes painfully familiar: decisions made far away, with consequences felt very close to home.
But ask locals when the process started tilting, and many point to a single moment: the 2018 Pepper Inquiry—touted as an independent examination of fracking but, in their view, structured to deliver a foregone conclusion.
The inquiry’s terms of reference asked only one decisive question:
“How can the gas industry proceed?”
It never asked: “Should it proceed?”
That, critics say, set the tone for everything since.
As one Traditional Owner put it at the time, “They weren’t asking whether it’s good for us, only how fast they can do it.”
And six years later, that feeling hasn’t gone away.
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A New Pipeline, Same Old Problems?
Into this long-running tension steps Jemena—the private operator of the Northern Gas Pipeline—whose latest announcement lands with the enthusiasm of a company that sees no controversy at all.
Today Jemena released its Northern Territory Gas Strategy, pitched as the “quickest and cheapest” method to move Beetaloo gas to Australia’s east coast. The plan leans heavily on existing infrastructure, positioning it as the low-cost alternative to multi-billion-dollar new builds.
The company says early-stage Beetaloo gas could meet up to 10% of east-coast gas demand, using the already-operational Northern Gas Pipeline. The pipeline currently has capacity to move up to 90 terajoules per day (TJ/d) as soon as Beetaloo production begins.
Under stage two, Jemena proposes to augment the system, boosting capacity by roughly 45%—to around 130 TJ/d.
And it doesn’t stop there. Jemena is also exploring a new 370km pipeline to connect the basin directly to its existing network from the Barkly region.
In short: a bigger, hungrier artery for Beetaloo gas.
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Jemena’s Case: Faster, Cheaper, “Customer-Led”
Jemena Managing Director David Gillespie says the company is “listening to stakeholders”—particularly upstream gas producers—to ensure the strategy meets “the reality on the ground.”
The first step will be a market-led Expression of Interest (EOI) to gauge demand from both NT producers and gas consumers down south.
In Gillespie’s words: “Our strategy focuses on effectively utilising established infrastructure rather than undertaking large-scale new infrastructure builds… By gradually augmenting the Northern Gas Pipeline, we can match transportation capacity with production volumes.”
The argument is simple: Why wait until the early 2030s for big new pipelines—at an estimated $4–6 billion—when you can incrementally expand what you already have?
For manufacturers, Jemena says, this avoids a “half-decade wait” and helps secure feedstock gas for a $100-billion sector that depends on stable supply.
A Community Still Waiting for Its Say
That all sounds efficient—unless you’re someone who wants a say in whether the gas should be extracted at all.
Traditional Owners have long highlighted that no amount of economic forecasting for 2030, 2040, or 2050 offsets the immediate risks: fractured aquifers, methane flares, seismic impacts, disrupted songlines, and the transformation of quiet outstations into industrial sacrifice zones.
Locals still recall that the original Northern Gas Pipeline—hailed in today’s release for creating 900 jobs and earning a Commonwealth “Significant Investment Award”—was built even as many affected communities reported patchy consultation. Critics argue that the process leaned hard on promises of local jobs, even though long-term employment outcomes were minimal.
Jemena stresses its ongoing commitment to Indigenous engagement, noting its sponsorship of 20 Indigenous delegates for NT Resources Week and its support for Saltbush Enterprise’s job-readiness program. But community sentiment remains mixed, especially in regions where gas exploration has already strained relationships between families, pastoralists, fracking companies, and government agencies.
The Bigger Picture: Billions in Gas, Trillions in Climate Costs
The Beetaloo Basin covers 28,000 square kilometres and is frequently described as one of Australia’s most promising new sources of natural gas—its reserves estimated at “a thousand times Australia’s annual domestic consumption.”
Federal and Territory governments claim the project could generate 13,000 jobs and add $17 billion to the economy by 2040.
But climate scientists counter that Beetaloo gas development—especially fracked shale gas—could unleash some of the highest lifecycle emissions of any onshore project in the country. Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is a heat-trapping gas 86 times more potent than CO₂ over 20 years.
To many in the NT, no economic modelling offsets what they see as the core problem: the project’s social licence was lost the moment the Pepper Inquiry framed the question as how, not whether.
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A Pipeline at the Crossroads
Jemena’s new strategy may well be the fastest and cheapest way to move Beetaloo gas. But fast and cheap doesn’t address the deeper fractures at the heart of this project: distrusting locals, disillusioned Traditional Owners, and a national conversation that still hasn’t stopped long enough to ask the most basic question.
Not how the gas industry should proceed.
But whether it should proceed at all.
Because until that question is answered, every kilometre of pipe laid across the Territory carries more than gas. It carries unresolved consent, unanswered objections, and a pressure build-up the industry can’t engineer its way out of.
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