The theory by jjia13 is interesting, however I think the...

The theory by jjia13 is interesting, however I think the weakness is that you don't really know what they are screening. Some applications are just bigger than others, therefore the screening time will vary with the size of what they are required to give a joint authority approval for. PEP-11 is simply bigger than most other applications because of the community protest and the shear size of it. A quick fun fact: because of its size it has been named as a "potential giant gas province" with up to 15.9Tcf.

And... it must be said that PEP-11 has been in Joint Authority for Decision in the past, therefore this means the ministers asked for further clarification on an aspect(s) of the permit application, if this "further information required" was a 1000 page document which was re-submitted with the required amendments.. then it would certainly take a lot longer to process than another project which is much more simple and straight forward.

And no, there won't be another "information required" status change, as the ministers have already requested everything they needed, and it has been announced they are in the final phase of approval.