Marrickville City Council in suburban Sydney recently blocked an attempt to mine coal seam gas on privately owned land in the inner-city area of St Peters. The Council imposed a condition on the development application order for the land, purporting to ban the land being used for coal seam gas mining. This ban raises a number of important issues: who owns the CSG under private land, and what does the decision mean for other NSW councils opposed to CSG mining?
Dart Energy holds numerous exploration licences across Sydney (including at this St Peters site, where the land is owned by Dial-a-Dump). These licences have been granted in accordance with Part 3 of the Mining Act 1992 (NSW. The validity of the exploration licence and the power to carry out exploratory drills for coal seam gas is, in turn, premised on the notion that coal seam gas is a mineral that comes within the scope of this Act.
Northern Rivers Echo
Samantha Hepburn is an associate professor at the School of Law at Deakin University in Victoria. She lectures in environmental law and property law. This piece originally appeared at http://theconversation.edu
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