Environmental Defenders Office

The Environmental Defenders Office has rejected bankruptcy concerns after paying gas company Santos $9 million in legal fees.

An environmental group has dropped its court fight over the expansion of the New Acland coal mine in Queensland, saying the case — which went to the High Court — had taken a heavy financial toll.

Santos’ plan to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 was “little more than a series of speculations”, a shareholder group has said on the first day of trial in a landmark greenwashing case.

The Environmental Defenders Office can’t dodge a subpoena by Santos seeking material to back a bid for full indemnity costs in a failed case over a pipeline for the $5.6 billion Barossa gas project.

A environmental group has lost its challenge to the extension of the Mount Pleasant open cut coal mine in NSW operated by MACH Energy, with a judge finding the planning commission considered greenhouse emissions and did not merely pay “lip service” to the issue.

The Australian Conservation Foundation has reached an agreement with Woodside Energy to drop proceedings over the company’s Scarborough gas project in Western Australia, which alleged the $16.5 billion joint venture could not go ahead until its climate impacts were assessed. 

The Environmental Defenders Office has replaced its chair and appointed a former judge to its board as it undergoes a review of its processes in the wake of an unsuccessful case against Santos over the oil and gas company’s $5.6 billion Barossa pipeline.

Santos is seeking to wrangle further documents from the Environmental Defenders Office to support its bid for costs orders against the law firm, telling a court there must have been “glaring deficiencies” in the standard of its services in running its challenge to construction of a pipeline for the energy company’s $5.6 billion Barossa gas project.

Activist organisations are seeking to challenge orders to hand up communications with the Environmental Defenders Office in its failed case against Santos over the $5.6 billion Barossa gas project, arguing there was no legitimate forensic purpose for the material sought. 

Several activist organisations will have to hand up communications with the Environmental Defenders Office over its unsuccessful challenge to the construction of a pipeline for Santos’ $5.6 billion Barossa gas project, as the energy giant mulls third-party costs orders against them.