“Keep Blue out of CQ” campaign

From the beginning…

Despite receiving a number of objections from the community and conservation sector, Queensland’s Department of Environment, Science and Innovation (now DETSI) provided Blue with an approval in March 2023.

With the encouragement and support from our friends at Lock the Gate, we decided that this was a project that should not have been approved and should be challenged.

The next step was to talk to the wonderful legal team at the Environmental Defenders Office about our options.  The prospects seemed good, and there was some funding available to lodge our objection in the Queensland Land Court.

The legal action

After 20 months of preparing and responding to long and legal complex documents, directions hearings and assisted mediation, Blue Energy,  DETSI and EnvA came up with a negotiated settlement to present to the court.

On 3 April 2025, the judgement was handed down.  It was a fantastic win for the environment!  The key outcomes:

🍃 Blue Energy has reduced the development footprint from 31,500ha to 7,630ha – a reduction of about 80%

🍃 The number of gas wells has been slashed from 530 to 117 – a reduction of 77%

🍃 There are now stronger conditions to help protect threatened species and communities and to safe guard the ground water, and

🍃 We think that the Queensland Government now understands that assessments of applications must be through and not just a desk-top analysis.

Our media release on the legal challenge is here.

“Our sincere thanks go to the fantastic Environmental Defenders Office’s legal team for their dedication, professionalism, patience and for securing a good outcome for Central Queenslanders and our environment.”

What happened next?

We celebrated our win but also reflected on the likelihood of Blue progressing their Sapphire Petroleum Lease gas project – and that Blue would probably apply again to pursue the other two lease areas which were taken out of the approval during the legal action. 

We needed to find a way to succeed in our quest to keep Blue out of CQ.

We know that there are a few steps that Blue needs to take before they can commence commercial gas production at Sapphire.  We thought we might be able to take some action to stop or delay, the approvals for some of these steps:

👉 We know that there are likely to be significant impacts to matters of national environmental significance (MNES) which means that Blue should really refer the project for assessment under the Commonwealth legislation (EPBC Act).  Hence, EnvA wrote to the federal Environment Minister and suggested that this project needed to also be assessed under the EPBC Act.  The Environment Department (DCCEW) wrote to Blue advising them of their responsibilities to refer the project for assessment.

👉 We also know that Blue Energy has not yet received approval of the Petroleum Lease required for the project to progress.   Hence, EnvA wrote to the State Minister for Natural Resources asking for the decision on granting a Petroleum Lease be delayed pending further assessment of the feasibility of the project.  The reply indicated that they took our correspondence seriously and are currently undertaking an assessment of the ability of Blue to meet all requirements of the Petroleum and Gas (Production and Safety) Act.

👉 At present, there is no gas pipeline to enable the sale of Blue Energy’s gas.  Their only potential buyer at the moment is Queensland Pacific Metals with an MOU in place to progress this.  Hence, EnvA sent a letter (beautifully crafted by the EDO legal team) to ASIC and ASX in relation to the greenwashing and misinformation put out by QPM.  The hope here is that this will cause QPM to not progress with the purchase of gas from Blue Energy and be honest that they are not using waste gas from coal mines to fuel their renewable energy TECH operations in Townsville.  We await the investigations by ASIC and ASX.

Our media release on the reporting of Queensland Pacific Metals to ASIC and ASX is here.

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Future steps