Two of Australia’s biggest LNG projects led by Santos and Inpex could face stricter environmental and pollution reporting rules after the Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority (NT EPA) recommended 23 ways to address a previous under-reporting of emissions.
The regional EPA of the state that hosts Inpex’s Ichthys LNG and Santos’ Darwin LNG has just announced the outcome of a review of the Darwin Airshed LNG Licenses.
The review was triggered last year following a significant upward revision of Inpex’s 2023/24 emissions estimates, including benzene, and related community concern about potential human health impacts.
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In October 2025, Inpex, the operator of the Ichthys LNG facility in Darwin, revised its emissions estimates for 2023/24 upwards by a significant amount after conducting a review of estimation methods.
The Inpex review examined emissions calculations from Ichthys LNG for the 2024 financial year and identified discrepancies between reported and actual emissions including total volatile organic compounds (VOCs) benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene.
“INPEX takes full accountability for these unintentional errors which have been reported to the NT EPA,” the company said at the time.
But as a result of the upward revision of emissions estimates, the EPA of the Northern Territory initiated its own review and came up with as many as 23 recommendations for the Darwin Airshed and the licenses for Ichthys LNG and Darwin LNG. The recommendations include applying numerical emission concentration limits and maximum mass emissions rates to pollutants, stricter limits on hot venting, and an audit every 5 years to verify that facilities are implementing best practice for pollution control.
For Ichthys LNG, the state environmental agency recommends the installation of continuous monitoring equipment for the acid gas stream, capable of measuring benzene and other pollutants of concern in real time.
Combined, Ichthys LNG and Darwin LNG account for about 10% of the annual LNG imports of Japan and Taiwan.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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