Approval of the Annie Gas Field in the Otway Basin
The Federal and Victorian Governments have jointly approved a new Petroleum Production Licence for the Annie gas field in the Otway Basin, marking one of the more significant domestic gas approvals in the southern Australian offshore region in recent years. The project, led by Amplitude Energy, sits approximately 9 kilometres offshore between Port Campbell and Peterborough along the Victorian coastline, and is exclusively targeting the east coast domestic gas market. Gas supply is forecast to commence in 2028, with the development designed to help offset the well-documented decline in legacy Bass Strait production that has underpinned east coast supply for decades.
The timing of this approval is not incidental. It arrives against a backdrop of genuine concern from governments, industry groups, and grid operators about looming east coast gas shortfalls as ageing Bass Strait fields wind down and the national economy remains partly dependent on gas for industrial heat, manufacturing, and peaking power generation. The Victorian Government has stated the project could supply the equivalent of more than a third of Victoria’s annual gas use, directed primarily at industries that cannot yet switch to electrification alternatives. That framing is deliberate: the approval is positioned as a transitional measure within a net-zero trajectory, not a departure from it.
Simultaneously with the Annie approval, the Federal Government has opened nominations for new offshore petroleum exploration acreage in the Gippsland and Bass Basins, covering offshore areas adjacent to Victoria and Tasmania. Those nominations remain open until 19 June 2026. For environmental professionals, planners, and infrastructure developers, the combined effect of these two announcements is a clear signal that a significant pipeline of offshore and nearshore environmental assessment and approval work is building, and that the regulatory and community scrutiny applied to that work is intensifying rather than easing.
Key details of the Annie gas field approval
The Annie gas field development will rely on existing infrastructure from the Casino-Henry-Netherby gas system, which has operated in the Otway Basin for a number of years. Gas extracted from the Annie field will be processed at the Athena gas plant, which has a nameplate processing capacity of 150 terajoules per day. This infrastructure-reuse approach is commercially and environmentally significant: it reduces the need for new greenfield facility construction and allows the project to utilise existing pipelines, compression, and processing equipment rather than building standalone infrastructure from scratch.
The approval is underpinned by the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 (Cth), which governs the licensing, environmental assessment, and ongoing compliance obligations for offshore petroleum activities in Commonwealth waters. Under this framework, proponents are required to submit an environment plan to the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) before any regulated activity can proceed. Environment plans must demonstrate that all environmental impacts and risks will be reduced to as low as reasonably practicable and to an acceptable level, and must address the full lifecycle of the activity including well integrity, produced water management, atmospheric emissions, and decommissioning planning.
Critically, the Federal Government has confirmed that all new projects and exploration acreage releases will be subject to mandatory 30-day public consultation periods for environment plans submitted to NOPSEMA. This is an existing requirement under the NOPSEMA environment plan framework, but the ministerial emphasis on it reflects the political sensitivity of new fossil fuel approvals in the current climate policy environment. Minister for Resources Madeleine King specifically noted that strict environmental and emissions standards will apply across all approvals. For practitioners preparing environment plans, this signals that documents which might previously have received limited public attention will now attract organised scrutiny from environment groups and community stakeholders.
The concurrent release of exploration acreage in the Gippsland and Bass Basins adds a further dimension. New exploration acreage nominations closing 19 June 2026 mean that the next phase of baseline environmental characterisation work for those areas will need to commence in the near term. Gippsland Basin exploration involves some of the most ecologically complex marine environments in southeastern Australia, including proximity to marine parks, commercially important fisheries, and habitats for migratory species protected under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth). Baseline studies for EPBC Act referrals and NOPSEMA environment plans in these areas will need to be scoped with that complexity in mind from the outset.
Australian regulatory context for offshore petroleum environmental assessments
Offshore petroleum regulation in Australia operates through a layered federal framework. The primary legislation is the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 (Cth), administered jointly by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources at the licensing and policy level, and NOPSEMA at the operational environmental and safety level. For activities that may have significant impacts on matters of national environmental significance, a separate referral and assessment process under the EPBC Act 1999 (Cth) may also be triggered, particularly where threatened species, migratory species, or Commonwealth marine areas are potentially affected. The Otway Basin offshore environment intersects with several of these triggers, including habitats used by southern right whales, Australian fur seals, and seabirds.
References and related sources
- Primary source: www.industry.gov.au
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This is an iEnvi Machete news summary. Prepared by iEnvi to summarise the source article for contaminated land, groundwater, remediation, approvals and site risk professionals.
Published: 08 May 2026
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