Chief Minister Natasha Fyles has claimed in a statement amid a growing shares scandal that her grandmother bought her what would become Woodside Energy shares in 1985, and that she has recorded them on her parliamentary Register of Members’ Interests for years – which has been contradicted by parliamentary records that show she did not declare any shares until after the last election.

Ms Fyles has come under increasing pressure after the NT Independent first reported on Monday that she had an undisclosed number of shares in the gas giant that has an interest in a proposed carbon capture and storage facility at the Middle Arm industrial precinct – a project Ms Fyles has been promoting heavily across the country.

Her shares in the company are expected to be probed during the upcoming Senate inquiry into the Middle Arm project, ACT independent Senator David Pocock said on Tuesday. A leading national integrity expert also called on Ms Fyles yesterday to divest her shares in Woodside or refrain from engaging in Cabinet discussions around gas development and the Middle Arm precinct.

Ms Fyles has refused to divest the shares, but released the statement to Mix 104.9 on Wednesday morning, in which she lied about disclosing her interests in the company, while also claiming “nothing will stop me” developing the Territory and that the shares issue was only raised by parties “hell bent on trying to keep the Territory down”.

“Let me make this clear, when I was seven-years-old in 1985, my grandma gave me a few shares in a company that’s now called Woodside,” Ms Fyles said.

“It was not called Woodside at the time. They were BHP and BHP last year merged with Woodside.”

This is not entirely true, as Woodside was first established in 1954. BHP, a mining company, was established in 1885. BHP’s petroleum arm merged with Woodside in June 2022, with BHP shareholders given shares in Woodside at that time. Both parent companies remain separate entities.

Ms Fyles claimed in the statement that she has “declared these shares every year I’ve been in Parliament, exactly as I’m meant to do”.

However, the Register of Members’ Interests shows Ms Fyles did not declare any shares in any year from 2016 to 2020, when she was first installed as a Cabinet Minister in the previous Gunner Labor Government.

In the November 2020 disclosures, following the 2020 election, Ms Fyles for the first time declared an undisclosed number of shares in “BHP Billiton”, as well as shares in Arrium (One Steel) and Blue Scope Steel.

If they were a gift from her grandmother in 1985, Ms Fyles did not disclose them every year as she has claimed.

Hard copies of Ms Fyles’ current records, reviewed by the NT Independent at Parliament House last week, shows she made an “addition” on July 7, 2022 to declare an undisclosed amount of shares in Woodside Energy, writing, “change of ownership in previously owned shares”.

However, Ms Fyles did not delete the BHP shares presumably because BHP shareholders received the Woodside shares for being investors in BHP, while maintaining their interests in BHP. Shareholders in BHP received one share in Woodside for every five shares they had in BHP when the merger occurred in June 2022.

In her statement, Ms Fyles said she had 169 shares in Woodside, while incorrectly claiming for the first time that Woodside has no interest in the Middle Arm precinct, which has been clarified by the company itself. Woodside is currently engaged in a feasibility study with CSIRO and other gas players around a “Northern Territory Low Emission Hub” at Middle Arm, a spokeswoman said.

There also remains confusion around the share totals provided by Ms Fyles, who said at a press conference later that her grandmother bought her 125 BHP shares, but she said she currently has 169 Woodside shares.

She added that she was holding onto them so that “they might grow for the kids”.

“But from my perspective, I’ve done everything wrong,” she said, without changing that statement.

“Let’s see where those 169 shares go one day.”

Ms Fyles still did not explain how she manages the conflict of interest of being a Woodside shareholder while Chief Minister. Federal Ministers are obligated to divest any shareholding in private or public companies while in office.

Ms Fyles took aim at Mr Pocock in her statement for criticising her for not divesting the shares and for failing to live up to the public’s expectations that politicians should act with integrity.

“The fact that this is being spoken about is a sign of desperation from people who are hell bent on trying to keep the Territory down,” she said.

“Opponents of the Territory’s future like David Pocock, who’s happy to trash our Territory if he thinks that will help him win votes in his territory, will do anything and stop at nothing to try to stop us from building the Territory’s future.

“I have a message for Pocock and others: you will have to try a lot harder than this to stop me. Nothing will stop me from realising the Territory’s future and creating clean, green jobs.”