“The hottest play on the planet,” Keith Pitt calls it. Resources Minister Pitt and his government are keen to open up the Northern Territory to gas fracking but, if the NT’s Beetaloo Basin is so “hot” for investors, then why do they need public money to drill it? Even more bizarrely, the industry has made it clear that it does not want public subsidies but Pitt and Co appear determined to throw public money at the gas companies anyway. Callum Foote and Michael West report on another extraordinary case of corporate welfare, environmental destruction and the political donors and large US hedge funds who we are all subsidising.

While most Australians were settling into holiday mode last week, the Government gifted another $130 million Christmas present to Woodside to help the oil and gas titan clean up its own mess. Callum Foote and Michael West report on the latest instalment of the Northern Endeavour debacle – a sneaky slug to taxpayers.

Thanks Woodside. Taxpayers are on the hook for the $200 million-plus clean-up of an ageing oil production platform moored in the Timor Sea. Is Exxon next to shirk its oil rig clean up in the Bass Strait? Callum Foote reports.

Australia’s carbon-belching future is surely being sealed by the Coalition with the acquiescence of Labor. As the world turns from coal, gas is almost as toxic for the climate. Callum Foote reports on Labor’s capture by the gas lobby capture while Angus Taylor appoints Macquarie’s Shemara Wikramanayake and former Origin chief Grant King to advise on his Energy Roadmap even though they are smack-bang in the middle of a billion-dollar gas deal.

The National Parks Association of NSW and ex-Energy Australia chair Ted Woodley are considering a legal challenge to the $10 billion Snowy 2.0, which they say will push back the transition to renewable energy and destroy thousands of hectares of national park, in light of the fact that the whole project hinges on a 30-year-old report. which is being kept secret writes Callum Foote.