Senex Energy is privately owned by Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Energy Corporation Pty Ltd (49.9%) and K-A Energy 1 Pty Ltd, a company owned by Posco International Corporation (50.1%).
UPDATE: 25 June 2024 – Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has given the green light to a coal seam gas project in inland Queensland, supported by mining magnate Gina Rinehart. The project, known as Senex’s Atlas Stage 3, has sparked significant concern due to its impact on endangered koala habitats.
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Plibersek Approves Controversial Coal Seam Gas Project in Queensland
25 June 2024 – The approval allows for the clearing of at least 360 hectares of koala dispersal habitat. Critics argue that the environment impact statement (pdf) downplay the extent of the habitat destruction, describing it merely as “four hectares of trees, measured in canopy cover within mapped koala dispersal habitat.”
Additionally, a high-pressure gas pipeline associated with the project received federal environmental approval earlier this month.
This pipeline will further impact local wildlife, clearing 35 hectares of koala habitat, 30 hectares of greater glider habitat, 28 hectares of glossy black cockatoo habitat, and nearly five hectares of Dulacca woodland snail habitat.
The Senex Atlas Stage 3 project involves the construction of up to 151 coal seam gas wells, access roads, pipelines, and a 300-million-litre CSG brine storage facility. The site is located northwest of Miles, a town that has experienced economic instability due to the boom-and-bust cycles of unconventional gas development.
One of the most controversial aspects of the project is its anticipated daily drainage of approximately six and a half million litres of groundwater. This process, necessary for the depressurization of coal seams, has been linked to land subsidence in Queensland’s Western Downs, threatening some of Australia’s most fertile farmland.
“Minister Plibersek is happy to pose for photos with cute and cuddly koalas one day and then approve the clearing of hundreds of hectares of koala habitat for new Gina Rinehart-backed coal seam gas developments the next,” Lock the Gate Alliance National Coordinator Ellen Roberts said.
“Koalas face death by a thousand cuts and despite her assurances that there would be no new extinctions under her watch, Tanya Plibersek is yet to fix Australia’s broken environment laws and prevent further loss of koala habitat and ensure that the impacts of climate change on them are not ignored for a project like this”.
“The expansion of the coal seam gas industry in Queensland is irreversibly damaging the state’s best farmland. Water has been contaminated, water bores drained, and cropping country is sinking,” Ellen Roberts said.
Senex background
Hancock first approached Posco about a joint tilt for Senex after buyout talks were made public with the duo already partners in Ms Rinehart’s Roy Hill iron ore mine in Western Australia’s Pilbara.
On 13 December 2021, Senex agreed to be acquired by South Korean steel maker POSCO International and Gina Rinehart for A$852.1 million. Senex delisted from the ASX stock exchange on 4 April 2022.
Senex’s gas production areas are Atlas, near Wandoan in the Western Downs Region of Queensland, and Roma North, near Roma. Senex are not partnered with a major gas producer, instead contracting their gas directly with manufacturing clients.
Western Surat Gas Project – Atlas operation is 20km south-west of Wandoan in Queensland’s Surat Basin. A 60km gas pipeline allows access to Wallumbilla Gas Hub
Senex is also seeking to develop a commercial scale unconventional gas field, which requires fracking, in the South Australian Cooper Basin. Senex has not partnered with a multinational energy company to share the cost of its gas exploration programs.
Roma North development, about 30km north of Roma, will produce gas supplies for the next 30 years. The 370sq km development includes an initial 35 natural gas wells, a processing facility and a 5km pipeline to GLNG.
Senex is also exploratiing in the Surat Basin, notably the Artemis block of 153sq km, located 11km south of Miles, next to APLNG’s Condabri development.
Senex Energy and Hancock Energy in the news …
In October 2023, Gina Rinehart made a cameo appearance in Netflix’s horror series The Fall of the House of Usher.
In February 2023, Hancock Energy completed a successful take over of Warrego Energy Ltd and delisted ASX:WGO from the stock exchange. Warrego’s joint venture partner in the West Erregulla project in the Perth Basin, Strike Energy, had offered a $410 million scrip offer for Warrego in an attempt to win over investors in the face of Hancock’s cash offer but after a protracted battle, which also included Kerry Stokes-backed Beach Energy (ASX:BPT), Rinehart bought Warrego.
Warrego Energy Limited has onshore gas fields in Western Australia’s Perth Basin it holds a 50% interest in EP469 which includes the West Erregulla gas project, and 100% of EPA-0127. In Spain, (Tarba Energia S.L.) it owns 85% of the Tesorillo gas project and a 50.1% interest in the El Romeral gas to power facility in Seville.
In July 2023, Senex signed gas deals with cardboard manufacturer Visy and with BlueScope steel and then began negotiating an exemption from the gas measures with the federal government.
In December 2022, Senex Energy’s $1 billion Atlas gas project was put on hold by Gina Rinehart, who declared the Albanese government’s intervention in the gas market made it “impossible” to sign up to new gas sales contracts, warning of “catastrophic consequences”. The government’s gas measures, approved by both houses of parliament, placed a $12 a gigajoule cap on uncontracted east coast gas for at least next year and then sold under “reasonable” pricing on an ongoing basis.
In August 2022, Senex Energy applied to Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek for an exemption from the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) for the Roma operation, saying it was in the national interest. Tanya Plibersek declined.
In 2022, Netball Australia players supported an aboriginal player who felt uncomfortable wearing Hancock Prospecting logos as part of a $15 million sponsorship package. The deal fell through when Ms Rinehart did not apologise for or denounce comments made by her late father:
“the ones that are no good to themselves and who can’t accept things, the half-castes” − to collect their welfare cheques from a central location. And when they had gravitated there, I would dope the water up so that they were sterile and would breed themselves out in the future, and that would solve the problem.” Gina Rinehart’s father, Lang Hancock in 1984
In October 2021, Rinehart shared her climate change denialist views during a speech at her childhood primary school.
Gina Rinehart was made a life member of the IPA in November 2016.
“Africans want to work, and its workers are willing to work for less than two dollars a day. Such statistics make me worry for this country’s future.” Gina Rinehart, 2012
Who is Posco International?
Posco owns a string of oil and gas projects through Asia, Peru and Oman and also holds existing investments in Australia including a minority stake in Whitehaven Coal’s Narrabri mine in NSW.
Posco runs the Shwe gas project in Myanmar and were named as one company profiting from its “operations that have helped prop up the military regime“.
The EU sanctioned MOGE, which owns a 15% stake in the Shwe gas project which exports gas to China.
Posco’s subsidiary company, PT Bio Inti Agrindo (BIA) has faced criticism in Papua New Guinea for clearing 270 square kilometres of rainforest for a palm oil plantation between 2012 and 2018. The company has been involved in disputes with indigenous communities about land rights.
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