TRADITIONAL Gomeroi Owners joined hundreds of protesters who gathered outside NSW Parliament to oppose a major coal seam gas project planned for the state’s west. 

Santos’ Narrabri Gas Project has faced sustained backlash from local farmers, conservationists, Traditional Owners and others, who loudly voiced their position at Sydney’s Macquarie Street last Thursday. 

Protesters say the oil and gas giant’s plan to drill up to 850 wells for the extraction of coal seam gas and run a pipeline through the Liverpool Plains foodbowl will compromise farmland and Indigenous heritage sites. 

They say the wells will pass through the Great Artesian Basin which is vital to the area’s grazing and farming and could be at risk of contamination. 

Independent MP Roy Butler, who represents the Narrabri region, told the protest without access to groundwater, local towns would be forced to empty out. 

“We cannot place groundwater at risk and that is what this project does,” he said. 

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