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Category: Oil and Gas / Conservation

Petroleum exploration in Kimberley national parks

Tuesday, 8 Nov 2016 12:29:09 | Ben Collins

Windjana Gorge (Supplied: Hugh Brown)

An oil and gas exploration tenement covering some of the Kimberley's best known national parks has been released by the Department of Mines and Petroleum.

One of the six recently released petroleum tenements covers the Kimberley's Windjana Gorge National Park, Tunnel Creek National Park, Devonian Reef Conservation Park, and Brooking Gorge Conservation Park.

Oil and gas exploration within the national parks and conservation parks would only be possible after a petroleum company had come to an agreement with native title holders and gained government approval according to the Department of Mines and Petroleum's (DMP) acting executive director for the petroleum division, Denis Wills.

"They do not have an automatic right to go and start petroleum activities in these areas until they have gone through a rigorous approval process that involves a whole of government approach," Mr Wills said.

He said exploration within national and conservation parks had to be assessed for environmental impacts if they triggered an agreement with the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA).

"We have a memorandum of understanding with that authority that any activities within 500 metres of an environmentally sensitive area, such as wetlands or threatened ecological communities … have to be referred to the EPA," Mr Wills said.

"If through that referral process it was decided by the EPA, and by the Department of Mines and Petroleum, and by the Department of Water that there was minimum environmental risk, or zero environmental risk for that petroleum activity, then yes, we would probably assess that as being an acceptable activity to undertake."

The entrance to Tunnel Creek in the Central Kimberley. Photo: Tunnel Creek is a popular tourist destination in the Central Kimberley and has cultural importance to the Indigenous Bunuba people. (Triple J Road Trip Relay: Dylan and Karlee)

Need for fracking uncertain

The Kimberley's environmental organisation director Martin Pritchard said the possibility of oil and gas exploration within these national parks and conservation parks smacked of a decision made from afar.

"There's no way on earth that anyone with any kind of understanding of the Kimberley would put a fracking lease on Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek National Park," Mr Pritchard said.

Fracking has been used in other parts of the Canning Basin, the massive geological structure that the new tenements also fall within.

But the DMP's Denis Wills said the new tenements would not necessarily lead to fracking.

The location of national parks and conservation parks in a petroleum exploration lease. Photo: An image created by environmentalists showing the location of national park and conservation parks dicated with yellow pins, within a petroleum exploration lease indicated by the shaded area. (Supplied: Environs Kimberley)

"Until that exploration's undertaken we're not sure whether there would be a need for fracture stimulation or not," he said.

Fracture stimulation or fracking is a controversial process of pumping high pressure liquid and chemicals into coal, shale or sandstone to release trapped natural gas.

Mr Wills acknowledged that this kind of resource could be found in the new tenements.

"We would probably see it possibly being tight or shale gas, but there could be the potential for just normal conventional gas too," Mr Wills said.

The Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek are popular Kimberley destinations for visitors and locals, and Mr Pritchard said they were not appropriate areas for petroleum tenements.

"That area is incredibly important both from a tourism perspective, environmentally and culturally, and it's obvious that the Department of Mines and Petroleum have not taken that into consideration at all, otherwise they wouldn't have put a fracking lease there," he said.

Fracking was conducted in the Kimberley by Buru Energy in 2010 and 2015 as part of the company's evaluation of tight gas resources.

Mining entrepreneur Andrew Forrest recently took an interest in the area when he entered into a joint venture with Goshawk Energy and announced applications to explore 220,000 square kilometres of the Canning Basin in November 2016.

Bidding on the six petroleum leases released by the DMP, which include national parks and conservation parks, are open until March 2017.

The ABC contacted the Bunuba native title holders over Windjana Gorge National Park, Tunnel Creek National Park, Devonian Reef Conservation Park and Brooking Gorge Conservation Park for this article, but they declined to comment at this stage.

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