Santos was ‘cavalier’ over Beetaloo Basin fracking expansion, court told

Santos has been accused of failing Indigenous groups and treating one of the country's biggest landholders with a "cavalier attitude" as it faces court action over a proposed expansion of its fracking operations in the Beetaloo Basin.

Fracking in the Beetaloo Basin is being accelerated as part of the Morrison government's gas-led recovery plan, and several companies, including gas giant Santos, are currently seeking to exploit the area's natural resources.

But Santos has met well-resourced opposition in the Northern Territory supreme court from Rallen Australia, a company linked to the wealthy Ravazzotti and Langenhoven families, which owns huge swathes of land in the area through pastoral leases.

The company has accused Santos of failing to meet strict obligations to disclose the proposed drilling of two additional horizontal wells on its land at Tanumbirini Station, near Daly Waters, in 2020, an expansion not allowed for under its existing environmental management plan.

"At the very fundamental level, what this case is about is a cavalier attitude by a listed Australian public company to important disclosure regulations imposed on it by regulations designed to balance the interests of the miners and landholders," Rallen's barrister, Marcus Pesman SC, told the court this week.

The court heard the company initially tried to convince the NT's environment department it did not need to revise its environmental management plan to account for the two new wells.

But the department disagreed, saying the new wells posed a "significant" and new environmental risk. It told the gas giant to lodge an amended environmental plan, which it did.