Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher expresses his dissatisfaction over the federal government’s gas project approvals process, saying Santos “continually gets held up” when trying to progress its approvals.

“If you go back to 2010 … there was the Gloucester project in New South Wales, the Narrabri project in New South Wales, and of course the Ironbark project in Queensland – you go forward some fifteen years, not one of those have been developed in that time frame,” Mr Gallagher said.

“I can speak personally about the experience we’ve had trying to progress approvals in Narrabri in that same 15 years period and we continually get held up.

“I think if you take that into the offshore environment, we saw the delays on other projects like the Barossa project, post final investment decision, post major project approvals, and I think it’s time, whoever wins the election, to sit down and look at the raft of approvals.”