00:01This is the first of three companies which is starting to put some gas from the Beetlew
00:07Basin into the grid but it is a small pilot project there are just three or five wells
00:13on this site and so it will be supplying gas to help power Darwin and Palmerston and the
00:20Catherine grid as well but really this is just a small project at the beginning of what
00:26the Northern Territory government is hoping will be a quite extensive industry and it's something
00:32really that has caused a lot of division in the Northern Territory community because quite a lot
00:36of people are worried about the process of fracking and whether that could damage aquifers that the gas
00:42drillers drill through or lead to water contamination something that both the industry and the government
00:48say won't happen. At the moment economists and the industry are saying really that still the
00:55economics of the Beetlew Basin are very tough it's a very remote area with not much infrastructure
01:01and so the cost of actually getting the gas out of the Beetlew which is south of Catherine to market
01:07into pipelines is quite high however the demand for gas on world markets and in the Australian East Coast
01:14market does remain strong particularly because of the world energy crisis and so the industry and the
01:21government are hoping that those economic challenges can be overcome and that these small pilot projects
01:27might progress to the stage where there is a full production both permission and final investment
01:34decision for the three companies currently operating in the Beetlew Basin. Darwin, Palmerston and Catherine
01:41became into a sticky situation a couple of years ago because the black tip gas field supplying the gas for
01:48the Northern Territory's top end grid electricity supply actually ran out of gas and so the Northern
01:55Territory government is having to pay huge amounts at the moment to buy gas that was intended for export
02:02from the gas exporter in PEX in Darwin and so the NT government has now entered a deal with
02:08Tamboran Resources which has started getting its gas out of the Beetlew today to buy that gas at a much
02:16more
02:16competitive price than it's having to pay in PEX and so that means that Darwin, Palmerston and Catherine
02:22actually have a confirmed supply for its electricity generation over the next number of years
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