In short:
A court case over a plan to store carbon in a Great Artesian Basin aquifer will not go ahead after the parties involved reached an agreement.
The federal government and Glencore were set to face off with AgForce in the Federal Court over the proposed carbon capture and storage scheme, which was blocked by a Queensland government ban announced earlier this year.
What’s next?
AgForce says it will push to for policy change at the federal level.
A Queensland farming group that took the federal government to court over a carbon storage project in the Great Artesian Basin says the case will not proceed after the parties struck an agreement.
Lobby group AgForce challenged Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s 2022 decision to exclude mining giant Glencore’s carbon capture and storage (CCS) project from assessment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act.
The CTSCo project, which sought to inject and store 330,000 tonnes of food-grade carbon dioxide from a coal-fired power station into a deep aquifer in the basin, was blocked when the Queensland government announced a ban on the practice in May.
AgForce chief executive Michael Guerin said this morning that the parties reached “agreeable terms” ahead of a hearing in the Federal Court of Brisbane this week.
He did not detail the agreement, but called for the government to legislate to protect the water source, which supplies more than 180,000 people across inland Australia.
“Ultimately full protection will come from federal legislation that outlaws pumping industrial waste into the Great Artesian Basin,” Mr Guerin said.
“The work of AgForce over the last couple of months means we’re in a stronger position to prosecute that.”
Push for legislative change
The case initially involved AgForce and the federal government, but Glencore requested it be added as a co-respondent.
A Glencore spokesperson said the company was not seeking to recover legal costs.
In a statement on its website earlier this month Glencore said more than 10 years and $50 million had been invested into the CTSCo project to investigate the capacity for safe geological storage of carbon dioxide in the Surat Basin region.
“The recent Queensland government decision to legislate a ban on CCS in the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) has been driven by politics and has little regard for respected scientific evidence,” the statement, which came in response to a senate inquiry, said.
“If CCS is not available as an abatement option for industry, it will have far-reaching ramifications for the resources sector, which provides jobs for thousands of Australians, particularly in Queensland, and is the cornerstone of our nation’s economy.”
Mr Guerin said the process of taking the government to court had given the group access to documents and information it could not otherwise access.
“The documentation that shows a complete inadequacy of the federal government consideration to that proposal,” he said.
“We’ll use that understanding of the process in the federal government to redouble our efforts in advocating for that federal policy change.”
A spokesman for the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water said legal changes in Queensland blocking the project had made continuing the proceedings “futile”.
“The hearing was vacated after AgForce agreed to withdraw their application,” the spokesman said.
“The [Act] prevents Carbon Transport and Storage Corporation Pty Ltd (CTSCo) from proceeding with the Surat Basin carbon capture and storage project.”
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