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Gas Pipelines

The fossil fuel industry wants to build massive pipelines across the country to open up vast new invasive oil and gasfields - from the Kimberley, to the northern Murray-Darling in New South Wales, to the Lake Eyre Basin in Queensland, and everywhere in between.

These pipelines would have significant impacts on farmland and natural areas across these iconic regions. Read our detailed fact sheet on the risks from high pressure pipelines here and learn more about how these pipelines are constructed here.

Overview

 

A new fracking gas industry in any of these areas doesn’t just mean thousands of gas wells, millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, and significant impacts to land, water and biodiversity. It means massive high pressure gas pipelines as well.

Gas companies need to transport their fracked gas to LNG export hubs and domestic processing plants, meaning huge new high-pressure pipelines stretching across the country - and even more risks to valuable farmland, cultural sites and delicate ecosystems.

 

Getting gas out of these remote regions of Australia would be an incredibly expensive and destructive undertaking, and it’s taxpayers and regional communities who will end up paying the high price for these doomed assets.

High pressure gas pipelines cause a lot of damage

 

High pressure pipelines include clearing of large areas in order to get access to bury the pipes, digging trenches in which to lay the pipes using specialised trenching machines, excavators, rock saws and blasting, and then using specialised equipment to lower the pipes into the trench and then covering and backfilling the trench.

It also involves a lot of above ground infrastructure, including things such as security fences, compressor stations and access tracks. Pipeline companies require 24 hour access to the pipeline easement, and the easement will constrain the uses that title holders can undertake.  

Some of the negative impacts from pipelines include clearing of sensitive vegetation, habitat for wildlife and high quality agricultural land, weed incursions, erosion and disruption of farm businesses.  Gas pipelines are a major risk especially where they cross creeks and rivers.

Read our detailed fact sheet on the risks from high pressure pipelines here and learn more about how these pipelines are constructed here.

There have been examples of massive erosion caused by pipelines in highly erodible soils in places like north-west NSW and numerous cases in the US where gas pipelines have exploded and caused major damage.

Pipeline companies, the gas industry and the federal Government are talking up these pipelines as though they’re a guaranteed thing, but communities and farmers are gearing up to lock the gate on gas pipelines - will you join them? 

Key pipeline projects currently proposed across the country:

Coal seam gas in NSW:

  • Hunter Gas Pipeline - two-stage 833km pipeline from Wallumbilla, Qld to Newcastle, NSW, via the proposed coal seam gas project in Narrabri.
  • APA Western Slopes Pipeline - 460km pipeline from the Moomba-Sydney pipeline to the proposed Narrabri Gas Project in north-west NSW. Read more.. 

CSG in Queensland:

  • Galilee Gas Pipeline - proposed 585km pipeline to get coal seam gas from the proposed Glenaras Gas Project near Longreach, Qld, to the existing pipeline at Injune.
  • Bowen Basin Pipeline - feasibility study into 500km pipeline from Central Queensland to LNG export terminals at Gladstone. Read more...

Fracking the Roper Gulf (NT):

  • Empire Energy and APA Group - expansions and a new pipeline from the Beetaloo to Mt Isa to send fracked gas north to Darwin and east to Queensland.
  • Jemena and Tamboran Resources - extension to Jemena’s Northern Gas Pipeline and a new pipeline from Mt Isa to join the proposed Galilee Gas Pipeline. Read more..

Fracking the Kimberley (WA):

  • Black Mountain’s pipeline - new pipeline from the Kimberley down the WA coast to Karratha. 
  • Transcontinental pipeline - economically unviable massive pipeline from WA to the eastern states, back on the table thanks to the COVID recovery commission. Read more..