Environment minster Susan Ley considers Lock the Gate's request to reclassify the Hunter Gas Pipeline's environmental impacts

Former environment minister Peter Garrett did not declare the project as a controlled action under the Commonwealth Environment Protection Biodiversity and Conservation (EPBC) Act when he gave the project approval in late 2008.

However, in a recent letter to Ms Ley, Lock the Gate presented evidence of a host of endangered and critically endangered species living along the pipeline route.

The species, which include the critically endangered regent honeyeater, the endangered booroolong frog, and the threatened spotted tailed quoll, were identified in a 2021 report by consulting and environmental services company Cessoils.

"The adverse impacts likely to the species from the Hunter Gas Pipeline in the forming of clearing, removal of dead trees and fragmentation therefore rise to the level of significant impact, and clearly warrant revocation of the original referral decision and replacement with a decision that threatened species are a controlling provision," the letter states.

The minister is unable to consider the now endangered koala because it was not listed at the time the decision was made.

A Environment Department spokeswoman confirmed the Lock the Gate's request was under consideration.

"The department is currently reviewing the request to determine whether it satisfies the requirements of national environment law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act), and its regulations," she said.

Lock the Gate Alliance National Coordinator Carmel Flint called on Ms Ley to request an new environmental impact statement.

"In her role as Morrison Government Environment Minister, Sussan Ley has a responsibility to haul this project in for EPBC consideration," she said.

"The impacts of the Hunter Gas Pipeline must be reconsidered given it was approved 13 years ago and new information has emerged regarding its likely impact on iconic and threatened species.

The proposed 833 kilometre pipeline, valued at $1.2 billion, would run from Wallumbilla in Queensland to Newcastle via Narrabri.

It was first approved in February 2009, with a five-year extension, to October 2024, granted in 2019.

Businessman Garbis Simonian, who leads the company seeking to build the project, told the Newcastle Herald in February that the company had been working with directly affected landholders on a final route and that "only about 5 per cent" of those were objecting, mainly "hobby farmers" with smaller holdings.

He said the pipeline would be buried underground, and that claims of environmental damage were greatly exaggerated.

The NSW Independent Planning Commission approved the Narrabri Gas Project in April 2021.

The Hunter Gas Pipeline would be a major customer of the project.

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