While we wait for @NSWDPIE DPIE to conclude its assessment of Santos' Narrabri gasfield, let's revisit some of the complicated but quite serious problems with the assessment of its predicted impacts 
Water is the big one. The gasfield will remove tens of billions of litres of groundwater to get gas flowing. This water is part of the Gunnedah Oxley Basin & in the Pilliga, it's buried below the Pilliga Sandstone, an outcropping of the sthn recharge of the Great Artesian Basin
Over time, the water lost from the GOB will be replaced by the GAB water moving slowly down. How slowly? that depends on geology. Does Santos know much about the geology? Not really.
Santos' groundwater impact model is "Class 1" which means it can't predict impacts on water users and the environment at the local scale. It can't be assessed against the Aquifer Interference Policy, as @NSWDPIE_Water has pointed out
The latest advice available from @DPIE_Water that the public has access to included multiple instances of impact triggers that should prompt Santos to "reapply for project approval"
This is pretty weird. A development consent is a legal instrument. Are they talking about revoking it later? If they're *this* worried about the lack of data and confidence about groundwater impacts, why would @IPC_NSW grant consent in the first place?
Other problems? Fugitive greenhouse emissions. Should we be bringing fossil methane to the surface, mobilising it to escape into the atmosphere? Here's what @UNEP has to say about gas in its "Production Gap" report
And salt. The groundwater Santos will extract is saline. The company will desalinate the water and then have tens of thousands of tonnes of solid salt, laced with metals and who knows what, which they plan to dump, but they don't know *where*
I wrote this thread because it makes me so mad that @NSWDPIE routinely conclude assessments of mining projects that leave *huge* unanswered questions, and I think they're about to do this with the Narrabri gasfield
