Riding along the coast on a small fishing boat, Paulina “Jedda” Puruntatameri gestures to the point where a long, pristine beach curves beyond sight, giving way to an expansive view of the Timor Sea.

“This is the home of the sacred sea serpent, Ampiji,” says the Aboriginal elder. Her people, the Tiwi, are the traditional owners of a group of islands of the same name that are part of Australia’s Northern Territory (NT) and lie 80 kilometers north of Darwin, the territory’s capital.

Ampiji, whose home is at Imalu Point on Tiwi’s Melville Island, is “the caretaker of this land and sea,” says Jedda.

It’s a role the elder has also embraced.

Together with other Tiwi, Jedda has been campaigning for years to stop Australian company Santos and its backers, including Japanese investors, from drilling for natural gas at the Barossa gas field — over 140 km offshore of Imalu Point — and transporting it to Darwin via an undersea pipeline that, at its closest, is 6 km from the Tiwi Islands.

Jera, Japan’s largest power generator and one of the biggest importers of liquefied natural gas in the world, owns a 12.5% stake in the project — purchased off the back of a $346 million loan from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) — and several Japanese companies are contracted to buy LNG from it.

Despite islanders taking Santos to court twice — and winning once — to stop Barossa from going ahead, the plant is nearing completion, with gas production due to start this year. Jera did not reply to a request for comment.

Barossa has progressed even as Canberra has strengthened climate policies under the Labor Party government, such as the “safeguard mechanism,” which as of 2023 requires new large gas developments to be net zero from day one.

In parallel, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has supported the continuation of Australia’s fossil fuel exports — whose emissions are more than double all greenhouse gases produced domestically — with coal and natural gas, respectively, being the country’s second- and third-largest exports.

Since its reelection in May, the Albanese government has approved a slew of projects, including extending operations of the North West Shelf, the country’s oldest and second-largest LNG plant, to 2070.

“Australia’s trying to walk both sides of the street, so to speak, when it comes to climate change,” says Kevin Morrison, an energy finance analyst focused on Australian gas at the Institute for Energy