LOCK the Gate started too late to realise its objectives in Queensland, but the timing is just right for NSW, according to the movement's founder.
Drew Hutton, a former Greens party campaigner, began the movement in Queensland in late 2010, after coal seam gas (CSG) development started.
The movement has a head start in NSW, but Santos said it has the necessary community support.
Santos, the State's most advanced player, is currently moving through the approval process for a CSG operation near Narrabri.
Mr Hutton is confident Lock the Gate can shut them out of enough properties to render the project inoperable.
"I think there is every possibility we will win the fight to stop CSG in NSW,” Mr Hutton said.
"There wasn't the same resentment (to Lock the Gate) in NSW as in Queensland. There wasn't any scepticism about me and I feel we have the affected communities right behind us."
Lock the Gate supports farmers in a push to refuse resources companies access to their property - the upshot being if enough landholders band together, development won’t have access to the necessary acreage.
However, in March, NSW’s two largest gas developers AGL and Santos made a potentially game-changing commitment.
They signed an undertaking not to enforce arbitration over land access for CSG operations.
It was the first such commitment in Australia.
“Our interaction with landholders in the area gives us belief that we will be able to gain the appropriate level of land access,” a company spokeswoman said.
“We have strong support locally and in the areas in which we operate – and this includes from the Narrabri community, local businesses, local representatives and the landholders.”
Lock the Gate kicked off in Queensland in 2010, but failed to halt industry expansion.
The four active CSG companies cranked up their operations in 2007 and are racing ahead through construction on the way to full-scale production.
"We should have started in Queensland in 2006," Mr Hutton said.
The Cecil Plains district on the eastern Darling Downs provides limited proof of the strategy's potential, where Arrow Energy's coal seam gas (CSG) operations have been halted.
"There have been a couple of hundred landholders lock the gate there at least," Mr Hutton said.
Lock the Gate has 230 affiliated groups and 35,000 individual supporters nationwide.
Mike Foley
Senior journalist for The Land.
Senior journalist for The Land.
