coal seam gas
16 Aug 2011
Coal Seam Drilling Begins Near Wollemi
Dart Energy will start drilling for coal seam gas close to a World Heritage listed wilderness area this week - and local residents aren't happy. Wendy Bacon reports
Coal seam drilling will begin this week just 500 metres from the Wollemi National Park, a World Heritage listed wilderness area near Putty in the lower Hunter valley in NSW.
Kathy McKenzie, the convenor of the Putty residents who are campaigning against the drilling was informed about the imminent drilling when she rang Dart Energy about another matter last week. Dart owns Macquarie Energy, the holder of a coal seam gas (CSG) licence in the area. The company announced the drilling in an undated notice delivered to residents later in the week.
Two weeks ago, the company told Putty residents demonstrating at a public meeting in Sydney that it did not expect to drill until mid to late September. Dart had previously apologised to the community for a lack of earlier consultation and undertook in its submission for exploration approval to consult with the community throughout the process.
The company’s first Putty drilling approval lapsed after residents pointed out flaws in the approval document to the NSW government. After the O’Farrell government was elected earlier this year, residents opposed to the drilling then hoped a 60 day NSW government moratorium on exploration licences would apply to a new approval. They were disappointed when the NSW Department of Primary Industries granted approval for drilling on a different site. McKenzie told New Matilda that the Putty residents were only able to view the fresh company review of environmental factors after the renewal was granted.
Dart holds similar drilling licences at the coastal heritage village at Catherine Hill Bay, at Williamstown near Newcastle, and over the entire Sydney basin. Representatives of the company are certain to face questions about its latest surprise move when they attend a community meeting in St Peters tonight organised by residents opposed to drilling in Sydney.
Greens MLC Jeremy Buckingham said he was horrified that the company had chosen to go ahead with drilling so close to several national parks and called for a "comprehensive pause on the coal seam gas industry".
The only environmental assessments required for drilling approvals are completed by consultants hired by the company. Buckingham described this as a "proponent driven process" which was particularly unsatisfactory for sites near national parks which "give protection from the surface to the centre of the earth" unlike private freehold land rights which only apply to the surface of the earth.
A spokesperson for Dart told New Matilda that the company’s current exploration plans only include one exploration drill. Waste drilling fluids will be trucked to a licensed facility. If exploration shows the potential for commercial production, there will be more drills on sites around the area. Dart has previously said that one option would be to take the gas by underground pipeline through the Yengo National Park, another national park which is also very close to the drill site.
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Posted Tuesday, 16 August 11 at 1:45PM
jbiggs
This is totally unacceptable. Mining companies have this country and its weak politicians by short and curlies. Abbott’s first reaction was good, farming and food (and national parks but he didnlt say that) must come first but then he was nobbled by the industry and Pilate like washed his hands of it, pushing it onto thye states. The greens are the only ones withy any guts or principle. .
Posted Tuesday, 16 August 11 at 2:42PM
ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE behaviour. Again the gas company demonstrates its utter arrogance and contempt for the community. Drilling right next to a precious wilderness area. And the only environmental assessment required is by company appointed consultants. This is mad, bad and very very dangerous.
Posted Tuesday, 16 August 11 at 4:02PM
This is nothing more than short-sighted, irresponsible, vandalism motivated by quick profits. It is also an inevitable product of unfettered power that the mining companies wield in this country. Who will stand up to them?
Posted Tuesday, 16 August 11 at 4:05PM
Klaas Woldring
Totally unacceptable of course. The major parties are losing their way on many issues! Not surprising that we have a Hung Parliament! They are out of touch with what most people want. HOW CAN THIS BE? It is the electoral system friends that forces us to vote for tweedledee or tweedledum: Single-district compulsory preferential voting grossly favours the major parties. How do we get more Greens and Independent thinkers into into the House of Representatives? The answer is Proportional Representation. If you want to know more about Proportional Representation feel free to contact me or visit the Republic Now website http;//www. republicnow.org.
Posted Tuesday, 16 August 11 at 4:09PM
Let’s move the whole Australian population to Tasmania and give the rest of Australia to the mining industries! Do you reckon that would satisfy them?
I’d say it would only take them a decade before they’d be arriving in Hobart and sniffing about. They are insatiable and obviously think the planet belongs to them. And Governments are happy to share their views and take their taxes.
Perhaps we 6 billion humans need to be transported to the Moon, give the miners and the capitalists the whole earth to rape and pillage.
Cancel that! The Moon has minerals too!
www.dangerouscreation.com
Posted Tuesday, 16 August 11 at 4:49PM
What a bunch of whingers!
Don’t you get it?
Royalties from mines are what’s floating Australia’s economic boat.
Wendy would be doing stories about the need for welfare for this group, that group, this hospital, that community center.
Let’s not forget the old age care bill.
And we have to put up with NM welfare activists complaining about the source of all this largesse!
Crikey @David, @Klass, @Why…, @annelise01 and @biggsy, think through the process here.
We create a massive, unsustainable, bloating dormitory of consumers and call it an economy and underwrite it all in the way of Nauru, via selling our very soul to overseas based miners.
It’s that simple.
You all wanted it. You got it!
Posted Tuesday, 16 August 11 at 4:52PM
And @Wendy, did the Minister for Fracking, aka, Minister for Over Population, aka, Minister for Stuffing the Environment, Mr Smooth himself, Tony Burke. Did he sign off on this jaunties too?
Posted Tuesday, 16 August 11 at 4:54PM
Yes, Examinator, party politics is to blame. Ban all political parties, only independent candidates may stand. ban all electioneering outside one’s electorate, and govern by consensus. The elected representatives should then elect a chairperson in open ballot, and those wishing to be ministers must present their credentials and be voted in, in a similar manner. It is time the population of Australia were asked what they prefer- food or the products of mines. If the Darling Downs are mined for coal seam gas there’ll be a shortage of food and clean water.
Posted Tuesday, 16 August 11 at 10:06PM
There might be the basis of an informative story here if there were some details of what credible risk might be posed to the national park values by exploration drilling, as opposed to darkly portentous mutterings. And no, ‘watch GasLand’ doesn’t cut it.
“food or the products of mines”
Utterly false dichotomy. There is a hell of a lot more land you can grow food on than will ever be mined. It’s that simple. Stuff worth mining just isn’t even remotely that widespread.
“If the Darling Downs are mined for coal seam gas there’ll be a shortage of food and clean water.”
Utter nonsense.
Posted Wednesday, 17 August 11 at 9:37AM
nimueoz
Oh Duffer you are well named.
Posted Wednesday, 17 August 11 at 9:44AM
nimueoz
And frankly Frank you are away with the fairies.
Haven’t you realised yet that when an economy based on exponential growth meets the wall of environmental limits what you get is a slow motion train wreck and that is basically where the world is now.
Posted Wednesday, 17 August 11 at 11:28AM
Australia is a Lobbyocracy in which Big Money buys “asserted truth” and policy and a Murdochcracy in which oligopoly media (including the cowardly, taxpayer-funded ABC) remorselessly lie by omission and commission. Some of what you are not being told by anti-science MPs and media below:
Methane is 105 times worse than carbon dioxide (CO2) as a greenhouse gas (GHG) on a 20 year time scale and major systemic gas leakage from the hydraulic fracking of shale formations has led Professor Robert Howarth, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, to conclude that “The large GHG footprint of shale gas undercuts the logic of its use as a bridging fuel over coming decades, if the goal is to reduce global warming.”
Yet a search of the entire ABC site for “Robert Howarth” yielded one (1) result relating to the Cornell professor (and that due to me in a reader comment thread). Searches of The Australian newspaper (Australian national flagship of the Murdoch media empire) and of The Age ( the Melbourne quality newspaper of the Fairfax media empire and arguably Australia’s most progressive Mainstream medium) reveal zero (0) and one (1) report, respectively, of the findings of Professor Robert Howarth (The Age report being a letter from me that it kindly published).
Coal to gas conversion consequences of converting Victoria’s dirtiest coal-fired power plant, Hazelwood, to gas: current gas plant average 0.75 tonnes CO2-e/MWh, Hazelwood 1.5 tonnes CO2-e/MWh); gives the same GHG pollution of 1.5 tonnes CO2-e/MWh at 0.94% gas leakage; roughly doubles GHG pollution if there is 3.3% systemic gas leakage (as for the US average) ;and gives nearly 5 times as much GHG pollution if fracking-derived shale and coal seam gas is used.
Science says stop burning fossil fuels ASAP whereas Opposition and Government policy is “5% off Domestic 2000 GHG pollution by 2020” and huge expansion of coal and LNG exports (currently increasing at 2.6% pa and 9% pa , respectively). According to Treasury, ABARE and US EIA data, Gillard Labor ‘s Carbon Tax-ETS means Australia ‘s 2020 Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution will be 1.8 times that in 2000.
A coal to gas transition represents a huge threat to a World that must get to zero greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution by about 2050 if it is to avoid a disastrous 2 degree Centigrade temperature rise. Australia has ALREADY used up its “fair share” of the 600 billion tonnes CO2 pollution the World cannot exceed between 2010 and zero emissions in 2050 to avoid a 2C temperature rise - Australia is now STEALING the allocation of all other countries (e.g. Somalia, Bangladesh).
All countries and intranational jurisdictions must follow the examples of France, England and New York State and ban shale deposit and coal seam fracking which destroys agricultural land in a starving world; diminishes and pollutes crucial aquifers; gives a huge increase in GHG pollution from systemic leakage, notably if applied to the electricity sector; and fundamentally violates science-demanded cessation of fossil fuel burning ASAP (for detailed and documented analysis see “Gulf oil & gas disaster, fracking, media censorship & dirty gas threat to World’”, Bellaciao, 16 August 2011: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article21087 ).
Boycott Murdoch media, vote 1 Green and put Labor last - unlike the almost equally bad Coalition, pro-coal pro-gas, neocon ALP (the Alternative Liberal Party, Another Liberal Party, the Apartheid Labor Party, the American-lackey Labor Party, and the Australian Lying Party) has betrayed pro-environment Labor voters.
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
Posted Wednesday, 17 August 11 at 1:51PM
@nimueoz,
“Haven’t you realised yet that when an economy based on exponential growth meets the wall of environmental limits what you get is a slow motion train wreck and that is basically where the world is now.”
mate, I’m one of the few people here that does ‘get it’!
Growing/bloating our population demands an increase in environmentally damaging raw material exports to underwrite the domestic “development” needed to keep the whole ponzi scheme going. Recall that our cities suck up most people imports and most arriving DONT export. Hence our continuing structural disaster.
Had they resolved to follow advice and stabilize Australia’s population, the rampant ALP / Greens enthusiasm for increasing Green House Gas producing exports would have been curbed.
Also, get on the train that realises the insanity of Australia’s role in providing the raw materials to tool up the most dangerous dictatorship known to mankind, the PRC, may mean that concern about crashing through the planet’s environmental limits may seem a minor issue in comparison to staring down a nuclear armed and nuclear powered aggressor intent on lebensraum.
Also having a crack at my sexual preferences is a bit beyond the pale mate…
All my best to you and your donkey friend.
Posted Wednesday, 17 August 11 at 2:01PM
A new online campaigning platform Do Gooder are offering free accounts to anyone who wants to start a campaign against fracking.
All of the points raised in the thread so far would be great starting points for a campaign & they make it really easy to set one up.
There’s also a $6000 prize pack for the winner which would give any campaign a huge boost!
Check them out here: http://thefrackoff.good.do
Posted Wednesday, 17 August 11 at 3:51PM
oh Frank and Duffer, you are such silly sausages aren’t you!
We do have a lot of land in Australia, but gee a real LOT of it is not suitable for agriculture or grazing to produce food. We also have limited water supply for such a dry climate. So wouldn’t it make better sense NOT to frack with these very essential elements to our continued wellbeing and existence? And wouldn’t it be nice to keep some pristine wilderness and try not to chase too many more unique animals and vegetation in to extinction? Biodiveristy is a good thing after all.
CSG is another fossil fuel in finite supply,it has a greater-than-coal carbon footprint courtesy of its destructive (yep that is the correct description, check it out) and dirty method of extraction.
Why plunder our natural habitat, our food producing lands, our water supply, our very backyards, in pursuit of a futile short term solution that will only line the pockets of the OVERSEAS companies and investors that are engaged in this pillage.
You can eat coal or drink gas.
Let’s focus our efforts on promoting and implementing truly sustainable energy options.
We’ve got them, let’s use them.
Posted Wednesday, 17 August 11 at 5:20PM
CSIRO SPRS (retired)
My thanks to DrGideonPolya for that reference to the work of Howarth et al at Cornell (a prestigious US Univ). Within that article is a reference to his PEER REFEREED paper which gives data which should be essential reading for all authorities associated with regulation of mining rights.
Howarth et al clearly state that the study data is preliminary, but indicative for shale gas fracking. On first scanning the paper (it is referenced and open source) I saw no reference to coal seam fracking, but clearly the methane loss to atmosphere potential of that process needs to be established and properly regulated.
It is little short of criminal that large scale drilling be approved before methane losses to atmosphere are established for coal seam gas production in Australia, as seems to be the case.
Posted Wednesday, 17 August 11 at 8:08PM
@annelise01 read my contributions more closely. You’re scanning darling!
Posted Tuesday, 23 August 11 at 3:59PM
How anyone in their right mind could approve coal seam gas mining at all is beyond me, especially after the recent deaths in New Zealand!
We have to preserve what little natural bush and agricultural lands we have left.
And the the desert and wilderness areas are all too precious to expose to the dirty and dangerous extraction process of this type of coal mining.
I thought we had heaps of ordinary black coal left to tide us over until we increase our green energy production sufficiently.
Coal may be a dirtier burn, but it’s much safer to mine than a gas.
Setting up methane gas producing plants from agricultural, industrial and domestic waste materials would be a much safer option.