Last week the NT government announced that Asian developer Jemena had been selected for the pipeline, and a suite of new changes, including to the Water Act to protect the environment and allow fraccing to be conducted safely.

While fraccing has been carried out in numerous wells over the past few years, and has been used for decades without any issues, Frack Free NT is concerned about the ramp up in activities given the $800 million pipeline will require more gas to be found to be viable in the long term.

Of course the pipeline has more issues than a simple lack of gas, with analysis from RISC suggesting that the pipeline might not even be viable, even before other reports from the Australian Energy Market Operator suggesting that there might even be an oversupply of east coast gas in coming years, making the NEGI a potential white elephant.

However, other analysis from EnergyQuest suggests AEMO has been unrealistically optimistic in its picture of gas supply for domestic use.

EnergyQuest says that by 2019 up to 133 petajoules of gas could be missing from the east coast energy market, which is a potential apocalypse for New South Wales manufacturing.

Frack Free NT and Lock the Gate are already well entrenched in the NT, and are warning of the folly of building the new pipeline at a time when Australia should be reducing its carbon emissions.

They say NEGI will lock in decades of pollution.

The activist groups are also concerned that Jemena has been given the nod by the Giles government before necessary approvals from the NT Environmental Protection Authority, Queensland authorities or the federal environment minister.

Already, traditional owner groups are vowing to fight against the pipeline, not necessarily because of their opposition to it, or the wider use of gas, but because NEGI could potentially enable hundreds of wells being drilled and fracced in the MacArthur and Beetaloo basins over the decades.

That, of course, assumes exploration success, but American Energy Partners and Energy & Minerals Group are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the chase, and incumbent explorers such as Central Petroleum, Armour Energy and Origin Energy believe there's plenty of gas in place - including some conventional targets - that just haven't fully been explored before.

Traditional owners, pastoralists, environmentalists and others all raised their concerns about the government's push for an onshore gas industry at a parliament house meeting hosted by independent speaker and former NT Minerals Council head Kezia Purick and chaired by Naomi Hogan from the Lock the Gate Alliance and Frack Free NT.

Frack Free NT recently kicked off as roadshow to warn various Top End communities about the evils of fraccing and the onshore has industry, with the backing of the Public Health Association and The Australia Institute.

Meetings were held in Katherine and Mataranka last week.