Article by Adrian Rauso courtesy of The West Australian.
New traditional owner opponents against Santos’ $5.8 billion Barossa offshore gas project in the Northern Territory have joined the legal battle, as a Federal Court proceeding started that could be a key test case over underwater Aboriginal cultural heritage approvals.
On Monday the Federal Court heard submissions from lawyers representing Tiwi Island traditional owner Simon Munkara, who earlier this month won an urgent injunction to halt pipe installation at the project, hours before work was set to start.
Justice Natalie Charlesworth ordered the injunction remain in place, with a case management hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Two more traditional owner applicants against Barossa — Marie Tipuamantumirri and Carol Puruntatameri — joined the debate on Monday. The two new traditional owner applicants are from two different Aboriginal clan groups in the Tiwi Islands.
They are seeking to prevent Santos from laying 292km of pipeline — all of which will be at least 7km offshore — for the Barossa project.
Kateena O’Gorman, a lawyer representing the traditional owner applicants, cited a cultural heritage assessment report prepared by University of WA associate professor of climate geoscience Mick O’Leary.
The West Australian previously reported that Mr O’Leary said in 2020 that he, as part of a research collective, had uncovered Australia’s first underwater Aboriginal archaeological site — in the Dampier Archipelago in north-west WA.
Those findings were challenged in June 2022 via a paper published by UWA marine archaeology expert Ingrid Ward and three other researchers.
Santos’ lawyer Joshua Thomson said the legal action was a “concerted attack upon Santos which we completely reject”, and that the Tiwi Island traditional owners had a significant period of time to raise their concerns about Barossa.
“For things to be raised right at the last minute it causes significant difficulty.”
At its closest point to land, the Barossa pipeline would be more than 7km offshore at depths between 33m and 254m.
