A huge liquefied natural gas export terminal is being planned for Abbot Point on the Queensland coast, coming just months after the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority approved plans to dump 3 million tonnes of dredge spoil in the sensitive region as part of coal export expansion.

Hong Kong-based Energy World Corporation has submitted plans to pipe gas 1000 kilometres from the Cooper Basin to Abbot Point, and then export as much as 2 million tonnes of LNG per year to Asia, according to documents posted on the federal environment ministry's website.

The Great Barrier Reef.

The so-called CAPLNG facility would require dredging of at least 500,000 cubic metres of material to be disposed of on land. The Australian Marine Conservation Society estimates the dredging would amount to about 800,000 tonnes.

“This is out of the blue,” said Felicity Wishart, a campaign director for the society. “The dredging itself is very damaging to the marine environment,” she said, adding that shifting it on land may also impact local wetlands or other regions where it is dumped.