The state’s peak farming body has announced its engagement with senior legal counsel as it ramps up opposition to the Narrabri gas project.
Santos is seeking to develop its multibillion-dollar project in the Pilliga Forest near Narrabri.
If successful, the company anticipates 1300 jobs would be created during construction as well as 200 ongoing positions. The company has also previously stated the gas would be used for domestic supply.
NSW Farmers acting chief executive officer Mike Guerin – who led a successful legal challenge against the federal government and mining giant Glencore in Queensland – said he was “getting the band back together” to fight the Narrabri project.
“NSW Farmers has engaged the same senior legal counsel we used to defeat the federal government and Glencore a couple of years ago, and we are actively exploring the best way to defend Australia’s precious groundwater from mining giants,” Mr Guerin said.
“The people who depend on the Great Artesian Basin for their water are living in fear that this project will go ahead and go wrong, like many of them do, creating tens of thousands of water refugees and forcing farmers to abandon half the continent because it’s been contaminated forever.”
In 2024 Mr Guerin was chief executive officer at Queensland farm organisation AgForce when it defeated the Australian government and Glencore in a Federal Court case over a proposal to inject carbon dioxide into the Great Artesian Basin. One of the key pieces of evidence was an expert independent hydrologist’s report, which found high risks of contaminating groundwater with high levels of arsenic and lead.
Mr Guerin called it a watershed moment for protection of vital groundwater, which was the only reliable source of clean water for almost half the nation.
“It’s a sad reality that governments, politicians and mining giants seem to be deaf to these genuine and real concerns about protecting this critical water source,” Mr Guerin said.
In its project information, Santos said the coal seams it would target are typically between 500 and 1200 metres underground while shallow aquifers typically lie between five and 300 metres below the surface in the project area.
“We have established a network of shallow and deep aquifer monitoring bores around our project area. Data from these wells will give the community added confidence our work is not impacting the aquifers,” project information states.
Political leaders have supported the proposal near Narrabri, including NSW Premier Chris Minns. Recently appointed NSW Liberal leader Kellie Sloane acknowledged the state needed gas as part of its energy mix.
