The land acquisition was made last week by West Australian Premier Colin Barnett for Woodside’s $A30 billion LNG Project.

West Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert said that the Greens would not let Labor simply “rubber-stamp the approvals” without due process.

Senator Siewert said that “They [the proponents of the Browse LNG Development] have still got to go through the environmental impact assessment. There’s still the heritage assessment and we will be raising it federally in terms of...whether the Government is giving it tacit support.”

The Department of Environment and Conservation has already granted a clearing permit to Woodside so that ground conditions could be established for engineering and construction planning. Wilderness Society State Convenor Peter Robertson said that the permit approval was premature and pre-emptive.

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“The environmental approval for the project hasn’t been granted by either state or commonwealth ministers, and therefore to clear a substantial area of vegetation in that area at this time we believe, would be pre-emptive of those decisions.”

The initial development concept for the Browse LNG Project involves offshore facilities and three LNG processing trains with a capacity of up to 12 MMt/a of LNG.

Gas will be sourced from the Brecknock, Brecknock South and Tarosa (formerly known as Scott Reef) fields, estimated to contain reserves of over 13 Tcf of gas and 360 MMbbl of condensate. The fields are located approximately 425 km north, northwest of Broome in Western Australia. The onshore facilities will be located on a site just south of James Price Point.

The offshore component will include deepwater dry tree units configured for subsea tieback, central gas processing and compression facilities in shallower water (100m), approximately 900 km of inter-field and infield pipelines, and an approximately 350 km 42 inch export pipeline.

The joint venture partners are targeting a final investment decision in mid-2012.