By Sonali Paul
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Australia’s environment minister said on Friday she is considering an indigenous group’s request to scrap a planned A$4.5 billion ($3.1 billion) fertiliser plant due to concerns about its potential impact on ancient indigenous rock art.
Two members of the Murujuga indigenous group this week wrote the two-month-old Labor government asking it to prevent Perdaman Chemicals and Fertilisers from starting construction on the urea plant on the Burrup Peninsula, which has received works approvals from the Western Australia state government.
The group wants the federal government to evaluate the project’s potential impact on indigenous heritage, with the aim of ultimately blocking it.
“I will carefully consider the application. I have made no decision,” Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said on Friday.
She said she has been advised that Perdaman does not plan to begin work at the site within the next few weeks.
The state government said the project, expected to take two years to complete and to produce more than 2 million tonnes of urea a year at full production, could proceed if certain rock art was removed from the area. The indigenous group, however, opposes disturbing the site.
The Burrup Peninsula already houses several industrial plants but also holds more than a million rock carvings, some more than 40,000 years old, which have been nominated for a UNESCO World Heritage listing.
Murujuga women Raelene Cooper and Josie Alec have been pressing the current and previous federal governments to assess the effects on ancient rock art from emissions from the proposed fertiliser plant and from other facilities on the Burrup Peninsula, including Woodside Energy Group’s Pluto LNG plant.
Woodside has a 20-year deal to supply gas to Perdaman’s new plant from its offshore Scarborough project, which is under construction and will feed the Pluto plant.
The Murujuga women said in a July 18 letter to Plibersek that “the Perdaman project constitutes a completely inappropriate act of desecration of one of the most important Aboriginal cultural sites in Australia”.
Perdaman Chairman Vikas Rambal declined to comment before the minister has made a decision.
Woodside Chief Executive Meg O’Neill directed queries on the urea plant to Perdaman.
($1 = 1.4480 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Sonali Paul; Editing by Edmund Klamann)
