On the day Nanna Kathy arrived in Darwin in July 2025 she stumbled across Santos’ office and had a thumbs down photo taken. Knitting Nannas have been campaigning against their Narrabri Gas Project for ten years. The company’s culture and environmental record was bad, but what happened after Nanna Kathy’s Darwin visit is on a new level.
Suki Dorras-Walker from the Environment Centre NT reported in a Special Nanna Zoom on 24 September 2025 the unprecedented gas expansion happening in the Northern Territory and the plans for the Middle Arm gas hub in Darwin Harbour. Since then, Knitting Nannas have been following the story and have realised the importance of our state and federal Freedom of Information (FOI) laws.
Exposing Santos gas leak
The ABC revealed a significant leak in a massive storage tank at Santos’ aging Darwin liquefied natural gas plant (DLNG) on the Middle Harbour Peninsular on 1 September 2025. A design fault in the tank had caused methane to leak out of the tank for nearly 20 years and continues to do so.
According to confidential documents leaked to the ABC and correspondence the Environment Centre NT obtained via NT Freedom of Information legislation, the methane leak is set to continue for decades.
The investment arm of Abu Dhabi’s state-owned oil company dropped its $30+ billion bid to takeover Santos after finding out about the leaking DLNG plant via the ABC News report.
Natural gas is methane, a fossil fuel and a potent greenhouse gas which warms the planet and risks community health and safety.
Who knew?
The previous owner of the DLNG export hub, ConocoPhillips, knew about the leak as did Santos when they bought DLNG for a reduced price in 2020.
No less than five government agencies, including the Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority (NT EPA), knew about the leak but decided not to tell the public.
Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority
ConocoPhillips reported the leak to the NT EPA in May 2020, just hours after the NT EPA extended its operations to 2050 without a full environmental impact assessment.
NT EPA released its new emissions policy in August 2025. Critics say under the new policy EPA’s powers were weakened to ensure major projects were only examined at the federal level, and this could lead to higher emissions. Australia’s oil and gas companies welcomed the new guidelines.
On 12 September, the ABC revealed that the chair of the NT EPA, Paul Vogel, was involved in key decisions around the DLNG without disclosing his paid role with a lobbying firm representing DLNG shareholder, INPEX.
Barrister Geoffrey Watson said Mr Vogel’s involvement in decision-making about the plant’s future was “one of the most obvious instances of a conflict of interest that I’ve ever seen”.
In late September 2025, despite national outrage and a very clear message from the Darwin community, the NT EPA renewed the Santos Environment Protection License for another five years.
Emissions
Fixing the leak is risky and costly. Santos has been cleared to use the leaking tank for its controversial new Barossa gas project without fixing the leak or measuring its estimated emissions.
Santos rejects calls for more accurate monitoring of the leak, saying “the cost associated with the installation and maintenance of additional instrumentation is disproportionate”.
Emissions from the leak are the equivalent of adding 7,000 new cars on the road every year until 2050.
Instead of fixing the leak, emissions will be accounted for under the Safeguard Mechanism, which sets legislated limits on the emissions of Australia’s highest emitting facilities. Over time these limits decline to help Australia achieve its emission reduction targets of 43% below 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050.
Companies only need to fix leaks if their emissions exceed their agreed limit. If Santos were to exceed its safeguard baseline emissions, it would not necessarily be compelled to fix the leak, as it could buy offsets. But who monitors its emissions?
New gas fields, such as Barossa, must have net zero emissions by 2050, forcing operators to buy carbon credits or to use carbon capture and storage (an unproven technology, especially at scale).
If the DLNG plant is treated as a separate entity from the gas field when reporting emissions, it would save Santos from having to immediately offset an estimated 1.5 million tonnes of carbon pollution from the plant every year.
If the old DLNG and the new Barossa project are assessed together by the Clean Energy Regulator as a new project, Santos says that would be an “intolerable risk”.
Freedom of Information (FOI)
Most documents about the DLNG tank leak were released under the NT FOI legislation.
Two days after the ABC’s revelations about the leaking tank, Labor announced it planned to overhaul the rules of federal FOIs. The Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025 was referred to a Senate committee on 4 September and submissions closed on 1 October with the reporting date 3 December.
Legal experts say reform to the federal FOI system is overdue. Some reforms are essential in today’s world, while others have been widely criticised for potentially weakening transparency and setting a precedent for states to do the same.
Action
Email Prime Minister Albanese and Mr Paul Vogel – Make Santos Fix the Leak! (Environment Centre NT)
Links and timeline of Santos gas leak
6 May 2020 – NT EPA extended DLNG operations to 2050 without a full environmental impact. Just after they found out about the leak
28 May 2020 – Santos announced it had completed the acquisition of ConocoPhillips’ northern Australia and Timor-Leste assets for a reduced purchase price (Santos)
6 August 2025 – Environment groups, researchers say NT EPA policy change is a worrying ‘WA blueprint’ (ABC News)
1 September 2025 – Freedom of Information documents expose Darwin methane leak ‘covered up’ by gas companies and regulators. Maps and reconstruction of what went wrong inside the huge tank. (ABC News)
3 September 2025 – Federal agencies face backlash over role in hidden Darwin gas leak ‘scandal’ (ABC News)
3 September – Labor proposes blanket refusal of freedom of information requests in overhaul of transparency laws (ABC News)
12 September 2025 – NT EPA chair Paul Vogel who had oversight of the gas leak ‘scandal’ had a paid role with industry lobbyist (ABC News)
18 September 2025 – NT regulator Paul Vogal takes new side job with a miner with interests in the NT amid calls to quit over gas leak ‘scandal’ (ABC News)
18 September 2025 – Abu Dhabi consortium drops bid to take over Santos (ABC News)
19 September 2025 – NT EPA renewed the Santos Environment Protection License for another five years.
20 September 2025 – The inside story of an ABC report that helped scuttle Australia’s biggest foreign takeover (ABC News)
16 October 2025 – Cost of ‘best practice’ on emissions at leaking Darwin gas plant an ‘intolerable risk’ for Santos (ABC News)