Whale area put Japanese firm off Barnett gas hub

13th December 2008, 9:30 WST

The Japanese company Colin Barnett wants to lure back to WA to build a $25 billion gas plant in the Kimberley does not like his preferred site for the State’s first LNG precinct because it is a whale resting area.

Documents obtained by The West Australian under Freedom of Information laws reveal that in July Inpex wrote to Duncan Ord, chairman of the State Government’s northern development task force, warning that a number of the shortlisted sites, including North Head, were not suitable for several reasons including the threat they posed to whales.

In October when the Premier released the task force’s report, which shortlisted four possible sites for the project, he controversially named North Head, 26km north of Beagle Bay, as his preferred site.

After Inpex announced it would build its gas plant in Darwin rather than the Kimberley, Mr Barnett admitted that his desire to lure the company’s gas development back to WA had helped form his decision to nominate North Head as his preferred site.

Inpex has repeatedly stated its favoured Kimberley site is Maret Islands, located off the coast and not a shortlisted site, while documents reveal it would also consider the Anjo Peninsula.

In an email attached to the letter to Mr Ord, Inpex said its research suggested the whale issue was a potential gas development showstopper.

“Inpex . . . would certainly struggle to endorse any location that interferes directly with whale calving/resting/migration,” the email said.

On Thursday, about 500 locals attended a Save the Kimberley rally in Broome to protest against Mr Barnett’s push to industrialise the region.

North Head has been identified as a nursery for humpback whales and a feeding ground for flatback turtles, both of which are vulnerable species.

The FOI documents also reveal that Inpex gave the Kimberley Land Council more than $4 million during negotiations for a possible site for a gas processing hub and repeatedly warned the previous Labor government it was considering building its gas plant in Darwin rather than off the WA coast.

Inpex wrote to Mr Ord in February detailing the funding it had paid to the KLC between 2006 and January this year.

This funding was on top of the almost $7 million paid to the KLC under a financial agreement with the previous government to consult traditional landowners over gas development in the region.

Mr Barnett said on Thursday the KLC, which had asked the State Government for another $2 million to consult traditional owners, would not get any more large payments.

PERTH
JESSICA STRUTT

Beagle Bay Church

Our thanks to Elena and Francesco for these pictures taken in October, 2008

Historic Beagle Bay divided over gas hub 17th November 2008, 6:00 WST

The West Australian
17th November 2008, 6:00 WST

The exquisite Sacred Heart chapel at the Beagle Bay community, with its intricate pearl shell decoration, is the most obvious link between past and present.

It represents Beagle Bay’s religious foundation and is much loved today by the Catholic Church, local schoolchildren, their families and tourists making their way along the Dampier Peninsula to One-Arm Point.

When the chapel’s belltower collapsed in 2000 an Australia-wide appeal produced the money to rebuild it. Emily Charles, whose grandmother collected shells for the chapel when it was originally built by missionaries and Aboriginals in 1917, is reported to have wept with joy when she heard the bells ring again two years later: “I thought ‘bugger going fishing with my nephew, I’m going to church’.”

Beagle Bay finds itself in the news again as the closest community to North Head, Colin Barnett’s preferred site for an LNG processing plant.

Some residents have no objection to it and believe that the project could provide the much-needed employment for Aboriginals.

Others are vehemently and vocally opposed and fear that the 1000ha site will be a blot on a one of the world’s most remarkable and pristine coastlines. Their protest led to a blockade of the road into the community last week when members of the Northern Development Taskforce were due to visit.

But there are other complications at Beagle Bay, intertwined with debate over the LNG site and connected with the community’s history.

The first Catholic school in the Kimberley was established by the Trappist fathers at Beagle Bay mission in 1892 and handed over to the German Pallottines in 1901. In 1907, the St John of God sisters arrived and stayed at the mission until the 1975 when Beagle Bay became a self-governing community. The community asked the Catholic Church to continue to operate the Sacred Heart School, next to the church and the Pallottines left in 2002.

In 2005, however, the community was found to be dysfunctional, riven by feuds and rumours of abuse and missing money, and was placed into administration. And there it remains, the administrator now referred to as a “place manager” with the task of managing day-to-day affairs but with no right to speak for the community.

The community is, in fact, voiceless.

During last week’s roadblock, resident and protester Albert Wiggan referred to the fact that the community has no legitimate governing body. He believes that the community, therefore, is hamstrung in its ability to negotiate over the plant. There are further complications in that the community’s land is held by the Aboriginal Lands Trust.

There is another problem, too. Many, if not most, of the residents of Beagle Bay are not traditional owners. Because the community has grown out of a mission, its inhabitants either are descendants of the stolen generation or moved to the community for other reasons.

Negotiations over finding a place for the LNG hub have been conducted by the Kimberley Land Council with traditional-owner groups from along the Kimberley coast. And so, many of the residents of Beagle Bay feel, rightly or wrongly, that their wishes are not being heard and that they have not been given enough information about the project to form a view.

Everyone seems to agree that it’s a mess, including Beagle Bay-born Kerrianne Cox, a musician and songwriter who was elected chairwoman of the Beagle Bay community in 2004 and was instrumental in having it declared a community in crisis the following year. She continues to be involved in the long process of uniting the disparate groups and helping build a local economy and does not see a gas hub as being helpful.

A Joint Government Action Plan for Beagle Bay was adopted when the community failed, with one of its aims the creation of a governance plan. It is, she agrees, a painfully slow process.

But, she says, she’s focused on the vision, not the negativity — as the religious orders which have been part of the community for more than a century have done.

PAM CASELLAS
The West Australian

Gas has Come to the Kimberley

http://youtu.be/ckPHkMwU58I

The impacts of gas exploration are already impacting on the natural bush and fragile environment with much land clearing in the heavy industrial and port areas of Broome. This is just an indication of what will prevail with the development of a gas hub on the Kimberley coast.