Garrett said neither the federal nor state governments wanted piecemeal development in the Kimberley leading to multiple ports and processing plants.

“Rather than dealing with a growing number of development proposals in an ad hoc way and risking the slow destruction of our environment and heritage, we will proactively use federal environment law to ensure that any future development has a minimal impact on the things we love and value,” Garrett said.

WA Acting Minister for State Development John Kobelke said the first part of the assessment would identify a site for a single common-user LNG hub for the Browse Basin. The area to be studied stretches from south of Broome to Cape Londonderry on the Timor Sea.

“We are trying to minimise the impact of development on the natural and cultural environment by finding the most appropriate location for a common-user processing hub,” he said.

“We will also consider locations outside the West Kimberley region.”

The assessment is aimed at shortlisting possible sites for the processing hub by the middle of this year and determining the final site before the year’s end.

Companies wanting to use the new hub would have to deal with environmental approvals for their LNG trains and upstream operations, but would not have to deal with any such approvals for other infrastructure associated with the hub as this would already be in place.

LNG proponents wishing to build elsewhere would be free to put in applications but would still have to wade through a morass of Commonwealth approvals and the notoriously laborious and tardy WA approvals process.

If there is to be just one hub for a port and processing facilities instead of a series of separately owned plants, the federal and state governments would have to provide much of the infrastructure – allowing companies to build, say, roads would also risk having them lock out competitors from those facilities.

Garrett has conceded this, but says it is too early to say what it would cost.