The Land, Coal Seam Gas and Coexistence

by Muhammad Makki

A snapshot to visualise and to give a glimpse of understanding -

The Land, Coal Seam Gas and Coexistence

 

First published as a shorter version in the Have Your Say column Courier Mail Saturday April 26

 

Muhammad Makki

 

It was getting much cooler in Goombi as the sun set after a bright and dry day. I was driving back to Chinchilla on a dusty unsealed road after meeting a landholder who hosts CSG- LNG pipeline. Something she had said to me through a piqued face stuck in my brain:

"Why don’t you open up your backyard and the front gate and let CSG in and then see how it goes” or let me say “suck it and see”."

 

The quiet country, with agriculture as a dominant avocation, is now depressed, and is experiencing a rapid change under the influence of coal seam gas (CSG) development. As the evening wore on in the Western Downs it reminded me of the ‘pain’ of being overridden, disempowered, exhausted and under siege, every day. Here now the sun sets quietly, full of stories unheard. The rules of the country and the complexion of country life are changing imperceptibly and the once fantasised setting is dissolving into doubts because of escalating CSG developments. Who cares if the very fabric of a farmer’s land is negatively impacted somewhere deep in the country; a world away from the sports clubs, fancy restaurants and cosy cafes of Brisbane.



Imagine morning on a farm, sitting on a chair watching dawn break, enjoying the tranquillity of your surroundings with a coffee listening to the birds and thinking, ‘What to be done today?’ – moments just singing out. The land, like an old trusted friend, brings freedom and long, honest working hours bring pleasure at the end of the day.

 

But your life is turned upside down as soon you open a letter from a CSG company titled, ‘Proposed Infrastructure for Your Land’. As soon you opened the letter your life becomes so stressful, with endless pressures and everything seems to be at stake: the farm, business, pride and motivation for being on the land. And then imagine yourself reading repeatedly the sentence:

“if we are unable to reach mutually acceptable access and compensation agreement, [the company] may, as a last resort, ask the Coordinator-General to acquire interests in land on behalf of [company] for the purpose of the project”.

You should know that you don’t have any legal power or right to say, ‘No.’; you simply have to ‘suck it up’. One can see the fear right there in your eyes, as clear as anything. 

Painting – ‘The letter and the landholder’ by Muhammad Makki

 

And then soon you will find yourself in a state of emotional stress, engaged in countless hours of reading and replying to emails, letters, phone calls, attending community meetings, information sessions, asking questions and trying to find answers, and attempting to make sense of complicated scientific terms. And imagine when you’re dealing and negotiating with more than one CSG proponent. This takes time, and when you are responsible for thousands of acres land and livestock that number in the hundreds, there is no time to waste. 

Imagine also restrained by a limited bank balance that you don’t have many moves left, and you are compelled to sign the agreement with CSG companies. Picture your paddocks and land becoming work sites for months, trampled by beeping utes going up and down and unknown persons on your property at times working around the clock under floodlights. Your land is overwhelmed by gravel or cement well pads, fenced with connecting roads, access points, underground power, gas and water pipelines, vents, and compressor stations. You discover that the auto steer tractor you purchased at enormous cost is no longer usable, because of the underground pipes and other infrastructure has fragmented the paddocks into odd shapes. And you notice that your cattle don’t utilise all the grass, now covered in dust because of the traffic. You worry about your underground water disappearing due to the CSG companies ‘de-pressurising’ the adjacent aquifer. You have to check and ensure now that there is no loss arising from CSG activities on your land and have to double check that gates shut properly, fences are in place, and cattle are not being exposed to plastic left lying about or any other dangerous substance. And let’s not imagine the ongoing management cost you will face for the pipeline and gas wells, which will be there for 30 to 40 years.

And now imagine your life is ‘Gas Gas and just Gas’. You will be known by the moniker, ‘Gas’, when you introduce yourself to someone in Toowoomba, Brisbane or elsewhere. At any funeral, birthday party or community hall the conversation will eventually come to CSG, and soon you will be sick of it.

And now you won’t remember the last time you had the luxury of thinking about improving livestock genetics, soil, pastures, ground cover and moisture retention; or even tennis, footy and cricket. There is no time for that anymore, and your confidence and motivation as a landholder is simply eroded.

Now the land might seem to be just a place to bury the broken dreams.

 There is no doubt that CSG industry has learnt and improved through the years, but the industry must realise that there is no fast lane out there in the country and it is the industry out of step with the pace of life of agriculturalists attuned to the variance of season and weather. If the industry does not learn these lessons, anti CSG movement is well positioned to slow the pace of development. There is no other way except for industry to reduce the severity of impacts on landholders and to reduce their distrust and doubts.

 

 

Note: This article is the personal opinion of the writer based on fieldwork experience and do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of any particular institution or organization. 

Contributor Muhammad Makki is a PhD researcher at School of Journalism and Communication & Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining (CSRM) at Sustainable Mineral Institute, The University of Queensland.

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