But new CEO Kevin Gallagher said a new company-wide disciplined approach should help ease concerns around its CSG interests in the Pilliga State Forest.

Ecologist David Paull, 51, who lives near the Narrabri project and Lismore local Naomi Tarrant, 42, were arrested on Wednesday protesting Santos’ project and tough new rules the green sector feels could cripple environmental charities.

Green groups who encourage civil disobedience could lose their charitable status, though Paull told Energy News that while Lock the Gate supported Pilliga Push, which orchestrated the protest this week, it had not actually encouraged him to civil disobedience.

A Santos spokesman told Energy News yesterday that while Santos respects the right of people to partake in peaceful, legal and safe protests, Wednesday’s protests near Narrabri timed to coincide with the company’s AGM in Adelaide were “unsafe, against the law and putting a strain on valuable local police resources”

“These protests are also largely carried out by people who do not live in or around Narrabri and it is unfortunate that a few protestors are claiming to speak on behalf of the local community,” the spokesperson said.

“More than 85% of the landholders within our proposed project area are supportive of our work as are local community groups including the Narrabri Shire Chamber of Commerce and Yes2Gas.

“The natural gas industry regulations in NSW are the most stringent in the world, and Santos goes above and beyond to ensure that we explore for and extract natural gas safely and without adversely impacting the environment.”

Santos chairman Peter Coates said the company would “not be pulled out of the Pilliga”, and that the Gunnedah Basin held a “valuable resource which is as important for the state of NSW as much as anything else”

“We are going to continue with the technical evaluation of that project,” he said.

“We will take as long as we require with the environmental impact studies that we are doing to ensure that when we do develop it, it meets the highest environmental and community standards.”

He said the best protection Santos has to improve its social license to operate was to “continue to do what we have done well in the past – and we have a good track record in this area”

“Don’t let anyone tell you anything different,” Coates added.

Gallagher told media after the AGM that it was inevitable that oil and gas projects were “always going to get a level of objection to developments, no matter where we are”

“We have to take all stakeholders’ – community, shareholders, governments – considerations into account when we go through the development phase for any of our projects, and we will do that,” he said.

“I talked in my speech [in the AGM] about discipline … my view is that a disciplined organisation includes all of that in its planning phase; we’re doing technical work around that project today that we need to do to move forward, which includes environmental assessments and analysis, stakeholder analysis.

“Once we have a development and we understand what we want to do to move forward, we’ll announce that.”