When a major gas incident occurs, the public deserves clear answers—not months or years of uncertainty.
Over the past two years, Australia has experienced several significant gas pipeline related incidents involving infrastructure operated by Jemena plus others that have not been reported on publicly. While each incident is different, together they raise an important question: are Australians receiving enough information about the causes of serious gas infrastructure failures?
The most significant incident happened in Queensland, where a regulator has quietly revealed the cause of one of the country’s most serious pipeline failures in recent years.
Pipeline rupture caught on camera
On 5 March 2024, the Queensland Gas Pipeline (QGP) ruptured between Rolleston and Oombabeer at Bauhinia in Central Queensland on Petroleum Pipeline Licence 30 before erupting into a massive fire.
When it went off it shook houses over 15KM’s away. I turned off my ride on mower and could hear this sound like a jet taking off, but from my house could not see anything. Had to drive 10 KM’s to get my first long distance glimpse and another 6 to film it.
The blaze burned for around 12 hours, damaging approximately 400 metres of pipeline and disrupting gas supplies to homes, businesses and major industry. Fortunately, nobody was injured.
At the time, Jemena advised that the cause of the rupture was under investigation. Public updates focused on repairs, restoring gas supply and returning the pipeline to service.
For more than a year the public was left without a technical explanation of why the pipeline failed.
The answer was hidden in an annual report
The cause was revealed in the Resources Safety and Health Queensland (RSHQ) Annual Report 2024–25. RSHQ confirmed that forensic testing ruled out stress corrosion cracking and instead identified microbiologically induced corrosion (MIC) as the proximate cause of the rupture. The report explains that MIC developed where pre-existing coating damage allowed bacteria to attack and weaken the steel pipeline wall.
Even more concerning, RSHQ states that investigations found bacterial activity at multiple locations along the pipeline, suggesting the conditions that caused the rupture were not unique to one isolated point.
Why MIC matters
Microbiologically induced corrosion is caused by bacteria. It is a recognised threat throughout the global oil and gas industry. Certain naturally occurring bacteria can establish colonies beneath damaged coatings or where moisture is present, accelerating localised corrosion that can eventually penetrate steel.
The Queensland investigation has elevated MIC from a theoretical risk to a demonstrated pipeline failure mechanism.
In response, RSHQ says the operator introduced more frequent maintenance and improved integrity management processes. The regulator also conducted more than 30 engagements with Queensland natural gas pipeline operators, highlighting lessons relating to MIC, stress corrosion cracking, cathodic protection interference and limitations in integrity assessments.
Significantly, RSHQ also identified “identification of microbial induced corrosion (MIC) in pipelines” as a priority area for its inspection and audit program. This shows the regulator considered this an issue with implications beyond a single pipeline.
Questions unanswered
The public is still in the dark as to what actually happened and important questions remain unanswered:
- How long had MIC been developing?
- When was the coating damage first identified?
- Could earlier inspections have detected the corrosion?
- Were similar corrosion sites discovered elsewhere?
- What changes have been required across other transmission pipelines?
- Has the industry reviewed other assets exposed to similar conditions?
These are reasonable questions for communities living alongside high-pressure gas infrastructure. Landholders are often forced to co-locate with pipelines, they deserve transparency not just quiet reveals in Annual Reports.
Meanwhile, NSW is still waiting for answers
Queensland is not the only state where significant gas incidents have occurred.
In Whalan, western Sydney, a devastating explosion in June 2024 destroyed several townhouses, claimed one life and seriously injured others. Investigators confirmed that gas caused the explosion, but the source of the gas has not been publicly established.
Then, in Lidcombe in June 2025, another serious gas explosion damaged an apartment building and injured residents. As with Whalan, no comprehensive public engineering investigation has yet been released.
These incidents are very different from the Queensland pipeline rupture. They involve gas distribution and building infrastructure rather than a high-pressure transmission pipeline. Nevertheless, they share one important feature and that is: the public still lacks detailed explanations of what happened and what lessons have been learned.
Jemena is the proponent for the Hunter Lateral Project in NSW which is connected to the Queensland Hunter Gas Pipeline that is facing widespread opposition from landholders.
The one that went unreported
It was only because of a social media post that this other pipeline explosion, near Injune, on one of the Santos pipelines was learned of. There are no publicly available details. We can only assume that some sort of accident occurred or was it a case of stress corrosion or MIC? In 2025, Santos received one penalty notice with associated fine totaling A$16,130 and one fine totaling A$10,000 but no information is provided on what these fines were for.
This is not good enough. Santos have a track record of pipeline accidents, including this one at Toolachee in South Australia.
Transparency strengthens safety
High-hazard industries improve when they openly share failures. The aviation industry publishes detailed accident reports. Rail investigations are publicly available. Mining incidents are often examined through comprehensive technical reports albeit also hard to find. Gas infrastructure should be no different.
Publishing investigation is about ensuring that engineers, operators, regulators, landholders and communities can learn from failures before they happen again, not so that the blame game can be played. Informing communities should be front and centre, especially when the expectation is that the gas industry co-locates within the community.
Communities deserve more than brief references in annual reports and should not have to rely on scattered media reports or isolated references buried in regulatory documents to understand serious safety events.
Greater transparency benefits everyone—from pipeline operators and regulators to the communities that live alongside Australia’s gas infrastructure.