Watch for the 1,999 hectare footprints

The big four coal seam gas companies in Queensland have had their major projects approved. By the evidence presented firstly by the Courier Mail newspaper and secondly by ABC TV Four Corners program the approval process left much to be desired. To learn more of these events read an earlier post on this site, Gas leak response. Recently the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) cleared any wrongdoing in the approval process mostly by a neat side step of that matters raised '… do not fall within the CMC’s jurisdiction.’  For further reading go to this highly referenced and detailed report of what has occurred in the online Independent Australian article, How the Queensland Government fracked the State

Despite its many flaws the big projects to this point were subjected to an approval process. They had to negotiate an Environmental authority (EA) with the government. They hired consultants to prepare mind blowing large Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) which were open to a public review and submission process. EIS look at more than just environmental impacts; they also include impacts on the likes of cultural heritage, transport, agricultural production and the very important underground water impacts. Each coal seam gas company are developing tenements they hold outside the areas approved within their current projects and to bring each of these new areas into production one would have thought that they would need to be scrutinised for any major impacts on conservation values or top farming soils etc.; but apparently not.

Take the example of the British Gas owned QGC project, Queensland Curtis Liquid Natural Gas (QCLNG) project which was approved for mapped area that included 6,000 gas wells, CSG water storage ponds, linking roadways, linking gas & water pipes, compressor stations, processing plants, accommodation camps, export gas pipeline and a LNG plant on Curtis Island.

The first photo (above) was taken at the end of November 2013 shows the QGC Woleebee Creek processing plant under construction; a massive piece of industrialisation lifting out what was once quiet cattle paddocks west of Wandoan in what was once amongst Australia’s best beef fattening country.

On the 6^th November the Australian Financial Review ran an article, BG seeks clearance for extra 400 CSG wells, in which it was announced:

“BG Group is seeking environmental approval to drill an additional 400 coal seam gas wells near Wandoan to help maintain gas flows to its $US20.4 billion LNG export project in Queensland once production from the initial batch of wells starts to tail off.”

“A BG spokeswman said the area involves about 50 landholders and the construction of up to three gas compression facilities, water and gas gathering pipelines, access roads and laydown areas in addition to the wells.
“The development is not expected to have any significant environmental impact, with about 94 per cent of the total permit area – or about 123,500 hectares – cleared of trees and used mainly for grazing,” he said.”

“Also included in the project are access tracks, accommodation camps and gas and water gathering lines, as well as storage ponds and pumping stations. Gas will be treated in processing plants being built as part of the initial project.”

 
 
 
 

 

The AFR article does say that this new smaller area to the existing QCLNG project is seeking environmental approval; but what approval?  According to a presentation given by Rory Ross at Shine Lawyers CSG information seminar at Wandoan on the 4^th December, any state approval will be no more than a tick and flick process with no public notification or public input. Apparently there is a trigger for any project with a footprint of above 2,000 ha to be subjected to scrutiny but no so those below. QGC doesn’t consider the project requires an EIS as it has determined that it has a 1,400 ha footprint.

QGC has to seek approval from the Commonwealth under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC). I’m yet to find a link to the application but if you type into a search engine these words - EPBC QGC Detailed description of proposed action - you should find a PDF file to download.

The second image (above) is sourced from this application, the green line shows the boundary of the new ‘400 well’ area; the light grey lines shows the pre-existing farm property boundaries for the “about 50 landholder’s”.  On the map if you look to the south of the green boundary to old farm boundaries marked in red, these are farms now owned by QGC and amongst them you will see a gasfield area in green text named, Woleebee creek; this is the location for massive the processing plant as shown in the first photo.   

But how available is the Commonwealth process to public notification or input?  At the Shine Lawyer seminar the audience was informed that the application was opened to public submissions for 10 working days on the EPBC website before the document was removed from the site. Apparently the environment minister, Greg Hunt, has determined that the application has to be subjected to further additional scrutiny but to find this information is not easy.

Currently any scrutiny of these additional smaller areas is held by a thin thread of the EPBC act and specifically the water trigger amendments introduced by the former government to appease the former independent MP Tony Windsor. There have been rumblings for the water trigger removal and one vehicle for doing so could be the Productivity Commission and then this last week there was the agreement between the States and the Commonwealth for “One stop shops” for environmental approvals.

The processes for approvals for CSG projects in the past have been far from desirable; current arrangements are not ideal and what for the future? There is certainly a lot of room for improvement and while onerous, conflicting, repetitive and time consuming regulation is not needed for all productive sectors of the economy there must be in place effective scrutiny.  

The last image was prepared by Rory Ross for his presentation. The yellow triangles depict current CSG wells. Look at the saturation to the south of the proposed new “400 well’ area to the Woleebee Creek field; this is the footprint of a 750 metre well spacing, the same according to the application will go in the new area to the north. Makes a mockery of a 1,400 ha footprint within the 123,500 ha area; even Roma farmer Peter Thompson who often speaks out about the positives about CSG made this very important observation in an October interview in the Weekend Australian when speaking about reaching a value on compensation for CSG activity on his land:

“At the end of that time it was finally agreed he would be compensated for the impact on his entire land, not just the area where the gas wells were. That saw him achieve the level of payment he originally sought.

"It was bringing it to an acceptance that the work impacts the whole property - the impact is not just around the gas wells, the impact is across the whole place," Mr Thompson said.”

To meet an ongoing need for export volume of LNG the CSG companies will progressively bring into production new fields. Going by current indications they will be tacked onto the initial project piece by piece, each below the 2,000 trigger. So watch out for the 1,999 footprint.

Previous related discussions

Top ten tactics and tricks

Gas Leak Response

 

UPDATE #1- Follow up discussion

Environmental approvals - How does the current system work?

 

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Gas Leak Response

For the whistle blower there is no easy road. Watching Simone Marsh on the Four Corners Gas Leak TV program it was evident the strain she was under. Ms Marsh needs to be congratulated for acting on her convictions and should be given every support.

 

Photo sourced ABC Four Corners

The account of a witness is very important and I am not downplaying Simone Marsh’s testimony on the Gas Leak’s story when I say that for those who watch the coal seam gas industry closely there was nothing new shown in the story. What Four Corners did was not so much as providing new information this time with the Four Corners brand of investigative journalism but presenting the information to a new audience.

Central to the Gas Leaks story was events in May 2010 when public servants were placed under pressure to approve not just one but two highly complex coal seam gas projects in a very short period of time. Simone Marsh told of how she was pressured into signing off on the projects despite the absence of key information for the crucial ground water studies. This information was revealed back in February by The Courier Mail in the article, Public servants tasked with approving massive CSG projects were blindsided by demands to approve two in two weeks.

 Documents obtained through a Courier-Mail investigation reveal that as the $18 billion Santos GLNG project was nearing its approval in May 2010, public servants were hit with the demands from the government to also tackle the $16 billion QGC project - and then the Origin-led APLNG proposal, approved in November of the same year.

And just days before the QGC approval was granted, public servants were warning the directors of the government's assessment team that they still had not been given any detailed information on pipelines and the location of wells.

They also warned a long list of environmental issues had not been fully analysed.

The documents obtained by the Courier Mail revealed not only objections by Simone Marsh but also by fellow public servants, Stuart Cameron and Murray Vincent. In an earlier article published December 2011, State knew about CSG problems, in a report way back in 2006 senior government bureaucrat Geoff Edwards warned the government that coal seam gas will have massive impacts.

Mr Edwards said water associated with coal seam gas did contain toxic materials like fluoride, strontium and hydrocarbons.

"Some of the lower seams are contaminated with difficult substances," he said

He calculated about 1.5 million tonnes of salt could be extracted over the life of the projects.

The Mines Minister at the time, Stirling Hinchliffe, downplayed the findings of the report but information I have received recently indicates it was right on the money. This will be a subject for a future post. 

There was no one directly representing either SANTOS or QGC on the Four Corners Gas Leak’s story; however Four Corners did submit questions to the companies and both have made their answers available online. To read the responses click on – SANTOS  - QGC

Left to sweat it out under Four Corners intense questioning was Rick Wilkinson the CEO of the industry association, Australian Petroleum Producers and Explorers Association. (APPEA)  

 What I found interesting was the responses of the two companies in the days following the airing of the Four Corners story. QGC took the path of a low profile must provide a small target. However SANTOS CEO David Knox in various media including a full page ad in the Courier Mail set out to right the “falsehoods” of the 4 Corners Gas leak’s story and to “correct a misleading view of SANTOS.”

Photo SANTOS CEO David Knox sourced ABC Inside Business

Not that SANTOS has been immune from broadcasting falsehoods as evident from the TV ads that it ran in Oct/ Nov last year when "landholder and farming consultant", Warwick Moppett, posing as the owner of NSW prime agricultural land, standing in fields of canola and cotton reciting the benefits of the CSG industry when he in fact lives far away and was on the land without permission. Locals viewing the ad picked up on these anomalies, voiced their outrage on social media and the story was first picked up by New Matilda before receiving widespread media coverage

 

Of special note amongst Mr. Knox’s media appearances endeavoring to right “misleading views about SANTOS” was an interviewed on the Radio National breakfast program, Wednesday 3^rd April, where Fran Kelly gave enough rope that  Mr. Knox made some significant misleading statements of his own.

First there was a very careful attempt to marginalise the evidence that Simone Marsh gave to the Four Corners Gas leak’s story in which Ms Marsh spoke of her concerns at the time that no underground water studies were included in the material she had to assess in the approval process of the SANTOS project.

Mr Knox spoke of a lengthy approval process where extensive water studies were included and that the consultancy firm Golder Associates had prepared an underground water report.

It was indeed a lengthy process and the Golder report was submitted to the Coordinator Generals Department while Ms Marsh worked in the Dept Infrastructure & Planning; a point by its omission allows the audience the possibility to reach a misleading conclusion.  

The Qld Water Commission report was used by Mr Knox to prop up his case. Mr Knox states the belief the QWC report is a “superb piece of work, a very detailed model that supports the original studies we did.”  He also states that the “definitive model by QWC shows impacts will be minimal” and then follows with this extraordinary quote that I’m sure will come back to haunt SANTOS in years to come that “in our area only 3 landowner bores will go dry.”

The effect on underground water is of very high concern for the farming and grazing community; many have read the report and are studying whatever other scientific material that becomes available. To such an audience they could well ask the question, has David Knox read a different QWC report?  In talking  about 'our area' which seems to completely ignore the fact the QWC report was also about cumulative impacts, meaning that all projects are at least partly responsible for impacts across the entire Surat Basin. The QWC report cannot be called definitive; if Mr Knox understood the process the report is but a beginning on a pathway to try to understand a very complex system that is essential to the future of food production for a time well past the CSG industry has burnt itself out. The work is being continued by the renamed Office of Underground Water Assessment which will undertake further collection of data and production of reports on a cyclical basis.

The QWC report does show that there WILL be significant impacts on landowners bores. It is simplistic, incorrect and patronising to make statements such as “QWC report shows that the shallow aquifers where farmers get their water from won’t be affect.” It is almost juvenile to say that “SANTOS drills straws into the gas seam and draw gas out through the straws. They are not connected to the shallow bores that farmers have.” 

What is the level of understanding about coal seam gas in the general population to give SANTOS CEO David Knox the confidence that he could get away making such misleading statements and also that are scientifically flawed? If Mr Knox believes what he was saying is correct, then we really are in trouble.

 

PREVIOUS RELATED DISCUSSIONS

PRA: Water management for the CSG industry

No longer such a gas - Part 1

No longer such a gas - Part 2

No longer such a gas - Part 3

PRA: Inquiry Gasfield Commission Bill

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