Battle for the Kimberley has only just begun

YouTube has footage of a roadside stand-off between protesters and crews in Woodside's hapless 4WDs, getting bogged going into the site; a rally at the company's Broome outpost where the guy with the megaphone yells "go home" to the new chief executive, Peter Coleman; and a nude protest on the beach where a young woman draped in a sarong on which is scrawled "No gas" shows us James Price Point is indeed beautiful and that "natural is best".

The scenes acted out are tiny but the nation is watching because the fight is about more than one site - slated for two LNG developments and a multi-user port - it is about industrialisation of the Kimberley.

Last year everything seemed stacked against the $30 billion gas hub proposed by the operator Woodside and its partners in the Browse project - Shell, Chevron, BP and BHP. Succession and corporate takeovers were up in the air. Other Woodside projects like Pluto and Sunrise were behind schedule or mired in controversy. Compulsory acquisition of native title rights over the James Price Point site, announced by Barnett in September, sparked an immediate backlash.

Now things are coming together: a fortnight ago native title claimants voted 164 to 108 to back the project, in exchange for a $1.5 billion benefits package (although one man told the ABC Barnett had forced their hand. "He calls it self-determination; we call it standing on our own feet with a gun to our head.")

Legal proceedings challenging the validity of the compulsory acquisition process - because the "notices of intention to take" failed to properly define the subject land - grind on in the WA Supreme Court next week, but other cases brought by Joseph Roe, a local lawman leading the indigenous minority opposed to the project, have so far failed.

Woodside's new boss, Peter Coleman - an ExxonMobil "lifer" - officially takes over on Monday. We know which side Exxon is on. For example, analysis by the blogsite Carbon Brief found nine out of the top 10 climate sceptics in the US were funded by Exxon. Exxon has championed drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and Coleman is being fingered by greenies for a "track record of industrialising wilderness in Alaska".

Coleman is committed to pursuing the aggressive development course charted by his predecessor Don Voelte, including Browse.

It will take more than aggression, though. Every step will be challenged. If the compulsory acquisition notices are ruled invalid, the clock starts again. More delay. A negotiated outcome requires an indigenous land use agreement to be consulted widely and registered under the Native Title Act. More delay. If the federal government's strategic assessment of environmental and heritage impact of the gas hub gives the thumbs up, that will be challenged. More delay.

The businessman Geoffrey Cousins, who has campaigned against Gunns' controversial pulp mill in Tasmania, says environmental opposition to the Kimberley gas hub project "is not going to go away".

"The state government is irrelevant. It made its mind up a long time ago, and it's not going to veer from that course," Cousins says.

Cousins asks why the Browse gas cannot be processed offshore, on floating LNG plant like Shell's Prelude project, a world first, confirmed last week. In private meetings Voelte and the Woodside chairman, Michael Chaney, told him there were technical obstacles to floating LNG at Browse. At a separate meeting, Craig Feakes of Shell said there were none.

In its environmental impact statement for floating LNG, Shell cited the sensitivity of the Kimberley Coast as a key reason for offshore processing, but a spokeswoman this week said Prelude was further north than Browse and the coastline was "more iconic".

Shell's reason for using floating LNG at Prelude is the smaller size of the field, at 3 trillion cubic feet, which makes onshore processing uneconomic. Shell will not comment on alternatives for developing the 13 trillion cubic foot Browse gas field but it has committed to the "front end engineering and design" process at James Price Point (BHP and Chevron have not).

A floating LNG plant can process about 3 million tonnes a year of gas while Browse is expected to produce about 12 million tonnes a year. "So what?" says Cousins. Use more floating plants, or reduce the output.

"All this is just tailored to the company, not the desires of Australians," he says. Cousins is not trying to stop mining in the Kimberley. "It depends how the projects are done. No one is fighting the Shell project (at Prelude). No one is going to tag me by saying I'm anti-development."

There was a modest turn-out to an industry conference on mining in the Kimberley in Broome a fortnight ago. Among the few dozen attendees, the WA Greens upper house MP Robin Chapple - an engineer who worked for BHP and Hancock Prospecting before entering parliament - felt "like the mad relative sitting in the corner".

The opening speaker, Ivor Roberts, an executive from the WA mining department, said the Kimberley was a world-class mineral province waiting to be developed. Mining in the Kimberley already produced commodities worth $838 million in 2009-10, from 746 tenements granted.

Rey Resources hopes to export coal from the Fitzroy floodplain. The oil and gas play Buru Energy is fracking shale gas wells in the Canning Basin, and the government is pondering potential underground coal gasification. Kimberley Metals will soon be shipping iron ore out of Wyndham.

The Mitchell Plateau has vast bauxite resources, and Chapple fears the death of the Mitchell Falls. Pegasus Metals has copper leases surrounding Horizontal Waterfall, visited by cruise boats generating more than $20 million in tourism income each year.

Paladin wants to mine uranium on defence land at Oobagooma, north-east of Derby, and apparently the federal government is co-operating. There is zinc, lead, copper, nickel and diamonds. You name it, drilling is going on for it. Then there is agriculture.

Chapple concedes it would be naive to think all new development in the Kimberley can be stopped but says a strategic approach needs to be taken to ensure a long-term benefit from mining: consult the public in the Kimberley; save what needs saving; do not make Aboriginal welfare a bargaining chip; avoid the social negatives seen in the Pilbara; encourage downstream processing; and invest something for the future, when the minerals are gone.

"The government intention is to open up the Kimberley," Chapple says. "What Browse does is bring gas onshore." With 15 per cent of the gas reserved for the domestic market, such an energy source could power alumina refining, possibly an aluminium smelter, gas-to-liquids, manufacture of ammonia, urea, and on it goes.

While state governments would normally play down the extent of planned development, says Cousins, at James Price Point it is the opposite. "The Premier has made it clear right from the start that this is about industrialisation of the Kimberley, the last remaining pristine savannah region on Earth."

Paddy.manning@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Twitter: @gpaddymanning