The study design for BP33 had a robust 133 years of data to work...

The study design for BP33 had a robust 133 years of data to work with so while seriously wet, its still well inside what they should have been designing BP33 to handle. Darwin area is also hot so there is a lot of evaporation which dries things out quickly when its not raining.

The key is not whether Grants pit has water in it as it does. The key is whether the BP33 box cut collects water and holds it for any meaningful period. The plan always was to transfer excess water from BP33 into the Grants pit. A mixture of pumping into ponds, releasing those ponds to rivers and natural evaporation would then take care of the excess water. Core management can now see whether their BP33 plans have worked or whether they need to add extra water management capacity into the DFS before a FID decision.

As per below, Grants area is part of the water management system for BP33 using Grants area as an excess water storage location. The plan was always to reuse Grants pit as part of the water storage system.