Integrated infrastructure planning essential to unlock Beetaloo

The Commonwealth is encouraged to work with the NT and industry on an integrated Beetaloo enabling infrastructure plan, before individual projects force roads, pipelines, power, housing, and digital infrastructure to be planned separately.

Beetaloo Basin gas could underpin far more than energy production. It could help attract major new industries, including data centres, while strengthening Australia’s long-term energy security.

Today’s NT News article by Camden Smith highlights that opportunity, with DMBG members Beetaloo Energy Australia and Tamboran Resources Corporation joining NT Business Minister Robyn Cahill OAM MLA MBA to outline the investment and infrastructure needed to realise it.

The proposed Project Ares data centre campus demonstrates that this is no longer just a theoretical opportunity. But major projects of this scale cannot be developed through isolated, project-by-project infrastructure decisions.

Australia now needs an integrated Beetaloo enabling-infrastructure plan, developed jointly by the Commonwealth, the Northern Territory and industry, to coordinate:

- gas and energy infrastructure
- roads, rail and logistics
- water and telecommunications
- workforce accommodation and housing, and
- the sequencing of government and private investment.

This is the practical next step required to turn Beetaloo’s potential into customers, investment, jobs and nationally significant infrastructure.

Through Facing North, DMBG will continue advocating for an achievable and actionable pathway that gets the Territory ready for development, rather than waiting for development to arrive.