The Victorian Government has given consent for a gas company to produce gas extracted from beneath a national park near the Twelve Apostles in the south-west of the state.
Beach Energy now has the go-ahead from the state’s energy and climate minister, Lily D’Ambrosio to turn a testing well beneath the Port Campbell National Park into a production well.
A Government spokeswoman said the Twelve Apostles were protected as a marine park and no drilling would occur within its boundaries.
Despite ministerial consent, the proposal still requires final approval from the state’s resources regulator.
Earth Resources Regulation executive director Anthony Hurst said that, if approval was granted, the site would be inspected regularly and subject to ‘quite stringent monitoring requirements’, with technology used to detect any gas leaks.
However, the Victorian Greens deputy leader, Ellen Sandell, told Guardian Australia that state support for fossil fuel expansion was ‘bonkers’, and she said no one would visit the Twelve Apostles ‘if it’s surrounded by gas drilling rigs’.
And Friends of the Earth campaigns manager Cam Walker told the ABC that the drill site’s proximity to the Twelve Apostles seemed ‘to be a strange own goal’, given the same government had excluded coastal marine parks from acreage releases previously.
“We may not see rigs offshore, but you’re still seeing commercial production within a national park,” he said.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO leave it pure and pristine…..