1.2 Scope

A ‘GBA region’ is defined for each assessment (Figure 1) to constrain the area of investigation (Section 2). The assessment considers activities associated with the development and production of unconventional gas resources at a regional scale for a 25-year development scenario. The unconventional gas resources that occur in the Beetaloo GBA region, which is coincident with the Beetaloo Sub-basin, include shale gas and tight gas. The Beetaloo Sub-basin may also contain liquid hydrocarbons (condensate and oil). These resource types, referred to throughout as unconventional gas resources, are described further in the Stage 2 petroleum prospectivity technical appendix (Hall et al., 2020). There is no coal seam gas in the Beetaloo GBA region as the rocks do not host coal formations. Assessment findings are for a particular point in time and will change as technology, methods and baseline knowledge advance.

Presented in this synthesis report are the potential impacts on: surface water and groundwater (Section 4.1), the environment (Section 4.3), and protected fauna (Section 4.4) (protected flora were not included in this assessment based on the screening outlined in Pavey et al. (2020)). Strategies for monitoring are also covered (Section 6). Bold hyperlinked text denotes where causal network node descriptions provide further detail and can be viewed using the interactive causal network in GBA Explorer.