Monday, May 21

Miner's 'poor' maps imperil dinosaur prints

ENVIRONMENTAL groups fear oil and gas giant Woodside is using misleading maps to drill at its $40 billion James Price Point gas hub site, putting at risk fossilised dinosaur tracks.
The Wilderness Society has written to federal Environment Minister Tony Burke claiming Woodside is using a hand-drawn map, which "misleadingly represents an aberrantly thin national heritage" intertidal zone where the tracks are located.

It wants Mr Burke to order an environmental assessment of the drilling operation, and to force the company to provide more detailed maps of its drilling area and stop all operations until it does so.

"In view of the global significance of the heritage-listed dinosaur trackways, we do not consider it sufficient for Woodside to merely provide 'gentleman's assurances' that it will not drill in the national heritage area if it has at the same time produced maps indicating that drilling within this area is a possibility," the letter said.

Save the Kimberley director Mark Jones said the tides could move up to 11m in six hours in the area, fully exposing the dinosaur tracks on the Broome sandstone.

"The drilling could disrupt one of the finer examples of dinosaur footprints found anywhere in the world, and it disrupts the mythological Dreamtime stories in that area associated with the local Aboriginal people," Mr Jones said.

"If this is the case, it shows the scant regard Woodside has for processes. And as we go into the pointy end we're finding more and more of the processes are flawed."

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The Australian

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