Great Artesian Basin Protection Group

AN ENVIRONMENTAL lobby group says Queensland faces great environmental risks from the world’s first coal seam gas to LNG project.
BG Group has given final investment approval for the first stage of the Curtis LNG Project in the state’s southwest. It committed $15 billion to the project, which includes building a liquefied natural gas plant at Gladstone, a 450km underground pipeline network and expanding production in gas fields in the Surat Basin around Chinchilla.
The Federal Government ticked off the project on October 22 and placed 300 environmental conditions on the development to protect groundwater, the Great Barrier Reef and threatened species.
But Friends of the Earth spokesman Drew Hutton said the government had allowed the project to go ahead without forcing the company to show how it would meet the conditions.
“British Gas has been given periods of time in which they are supposed to present accurate modelling of the Great Artesian Basin and they also have to show how they will minimise risk to underground water systems,” he said.