The Federal Government has granted conditional approval to the Maules Creek and Boggabri mine proposals, as well as the Gloucester coal seam methane gas project.

Federal Environment Minister, Tony Burke, said that the projects had been granted approval subject to ‘strict conditions and further work to minimise their potential environmental impacts’.

“In each of these three additional approvals there is more work to be concluded before the project can actually proceed,” Mr Burke said.

“As the conditions make clear where more work, new plans or further modelling needs to take place, then this must be carried out to my satisfaction.

Mr Burke took the opportunity to hit out at the New South Wales Government for leaking ‘commercially sensitive information’, and would therefore exclude the State Government from further conditional approval stipulations.

“Unfortunately the decision of the New South Wales Government to leak commercially sensitive information has caused me to have to bring these decisions forward today with the remaining work to be resolved directly between the company and myself,” Mr Burke said.

Together, the approval conditions for the two projects:

  • put in place strict clearance limits for native vegetation
  • provide enduring protection of offset areas totalling more than 15,000 hectares for matters protected under national environmental law, delivering secure and long term conservation across the region
  • require management plans to improve the extent, condition and connectivity of the ecological community and listed threatened species habitats, and
  • require $2.5 million dollars of investment in rehabilitation research and contributions to threatened species recovery actions
  • The Gloucester project has been conditionally approved subject to 36 strict conditions to minimise its potential environmental impacts.