Dropping planeloads of crap on people would be less toxic than gas industry's current output

Just as Environment Minister Murray Watt prepares to introduce proposed changes to our national environment laws when Parliament resumes next week, Australia's gas industry is demonstrating, once again, that it operates like the wild west. A new environmental scandal has emerged, the latest in a series of toxic public health and environmental catastrophes from the gas export industry. It's not clear that Labor's proposed environmental laws will do anything to rein in this reckless industry either.

Japanese gas giant INPEX has revealed it made an error in its reporting of how much toxic, cancer-causing benzene is emitted from its Icthys LNG plant in Darwin.

"INPEX has identified errors in the way some emissions from the Ichthys LNG onshore facility at Bladin Point near Darwin have been calculated," read the statement, as though it had made a rounding error.

In actual fact, it's been reported INPEX underreported its toxic emissions by 13,000 per cent. That's not a typo. To give a sense of the scale, it's like telling the bank in your loan application that you have a $10,000 credit card debt, when you actually have $1.3 million in credit card debt. Only imagine the credit card debt is cancer-causing benzene INPEX emitted into in the atmosphere around four kilometres from Darwin CBD. Whoopsie daisy!

INPEX has said there is no concern about increased health impacts, which is about as comforting as the tobacco industry assuring the public there is no link between passive smoking and cancer. The ABC revealed last year that the same facility was emitting thousands more tonnes of pollutants that it was permitted, emitting chemicals like benzene, sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide with virtually no regulatory oversight or enforcement. In fact, INPEX's gas facility in Darwin is so polluting, in 2022 it emitted more toxic chemicals than one of the world's biggest gas fields - Chevron's aptly titled Gorgon project.

The NT Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has initiated an "immediate investigation" to evaluate the risks and "determine if regulatory action is required". That's not a typo either. The EPA will investigate to determine "if" regulatory action is required, which implies the EPA thinks underreporting the emissions of cancer-causing chemicals is some kind of fuzzy grey area of environmental law, not a flagrant breach of the law and INPEX's permit to operate.

Regulators didn't catch INPEX's toxic emissions; the company caught itself. That's what happens when your environmental watchdogs are encouraged to fetch, not bite.

It's no wonder.

The head of the EPA in the NT, Paul Vogel, was working with a lobbyist for the co-owner of a gas project that kept a 20-year methane leak secret from the public, revealed only thanks to documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws by the Environment Centre NT and investigative reporting by the ABC. Santos, the new owner, has no current plans to fix the leak. This is also fine and dandy with the regulator.

Vogel was also set to oversee the investigation of INPEX's current toxic scandal, with the "full confidence" of the NT government, but sanity prevailed and he will now step aside for the duration of the investigation. But there can be no public confidence in a regulator that is both asleep at the wheel, and so hopelessly compromised.

Yet state and federal governments are no better.

The Prime Minister himself intervened to scupper the last round of environmental reforms that Tanya Plibersek negotiated with the Greens at the behest of the WA government, seeking to protect the rapacious gas export industry. Now, given a choice between negotiating stronger environment laws with the Greens, or weaker environment laws with the Coalition, Labor has pursued the latter.

INPEX and Santos are the kind of big companies whose projects the government will "streamline" under the new system, if they get captured at all; Labor doesn't intend to include a climate trigger in the new environment laws.

Environment Minister Murray Watt says he's working "pragmatically" with the Coalition and it's being sold as a bipartisan deal. But "bipartisan" doesn't mean sensible, it doesn't mean evidence-based and it doesn't mean effective.

Watt insists he's working to "restore trust" in the system. Which is an interesting way to describe cutting deals with the same political bloc that once called environmental protections "green lawfare".

In the meantime, the gas export industry continues to treat Australians like mugs and drive up the cost of living.

The gas industry exports around 80 per cent of Australian gas and then tries to convince the public there's a gas shortage. Since Australia started exporting gas, wholesale domestic gas priced have tripled and electricity prices have doubled, according to Australia Institute research.

The Australian Taxation Office has described the gas industry as "systemic non-payer of tax" and Treasury has stated that "To date, not a single LNG project has paid any Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) and many are not expected to pay significant amounts of PRRT until the 2030s."

Australia is one of the largest exporters of gas on Earth, yet the Commonwealth government collects more money from HECS than it does from the PRRT. Not only is Australia letting the gas industry drive up energy prices, cause climate change and emit climate-change and cancer-causing chemicals into the atmosphere - we're not even charging them to do it.

Around half of the gas Australia exports is given away to gas companies like INPEX royalty-free. INPEX exports more gas each year than is used in NSW, VIC and SA combined. Outside of emergencies, it sells no gas to Australians. It pays no royalties, no PRRT and it paid no company tax between 2015 and 2024, despite exporting $21 billion in gas.

The funny thing, if the gas industry really did fly around the country spraying crap on Australians - it would probably be less toxic for both the environment and Australians than its massive gas exports. The joke is on us, I guess.