PRA: November newsletter

 

 

Property Rights issues keep on coming thick and

fast. The length of time between newsletters isn't an indication that nothing has been happening rather just how busy the board has been.

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the presentations from this last conference are now available on YouTube (links below) with a few more in the process of being edited and will be available soon.

Ashley McKay - 10 years PRA history and achievements

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0aEdSWjPOw

 

Richard Golden - Living & Working in a Gasfield

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8rVNH29fDs

 Troy Rowling - How do we get the message across in the city press?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW3LS1w0feY

 

Coal Seam Gas

MLA through RIRDC has a research paper available which discusses co-existence. If anything the paper bears out the claims of our members that negotiating with the various bodies who may want to share your land is time consuming and requires a great deal of personal research. Look at point 1 and how many fields a landowner is advised to become an instant expert in. I cannot disagree. Obtain specialist advice but relying on specialists who do not come with recommendations leaves one open to charlatans. There is no easy road.

These are just a couple of snippets from the paper.

It is likely that a new land use will interfere with the efficient operation of existing farm enterprises and as a consequence could increase production costs and/or lower farm revenue. Accommodation of the new land use may also require a significant time commitment by the landholder. Changes in farm profitability and associated uncertainty could translate into changes in agricultural land values and increased competition for resources, such as water, from the new land use. Increased traffic through or around a property will also increase biosecurity risk, which will need to be addressed

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A Checklist of Negotiation Processes for Landholders

1. Inform yourself of all the aspects of the process in which you are involved, such as legal, agronomic, hydrological, biosecurity, etc.

6. Negotiation will take significant time. Previous experience has shown that negotiations for a single

property can take up to 500 hours, with over 100 hours directly interacting with the new land use

proponent in the first six months.

7. Comprehensive documentation is required throughout the negotiation process, including proposals and personnel change and information that may be provided by the new land use proponent e.g. in one situation six sites on a property that were initially discussed ended up being 42.

8. The new land use proponent may be large and unwieldy and routinely turnover staff – do not assume that they all know what is going on at any one time. Insist on an organisational chart and ensure you are working with someone senior enough to make decisions.

9. Ensure there are compensation provisions built into agreements for any change in scope or

construction timetable

 

The whole paper can be accessed with the following link.

Principles for negotiating appropriate co-existence arrangements for agricultural landholders

With the plethora of CSG wells, mines and associated infrastructure moving at such a fast speed any cracks in the legislation are becoming visible.

Planning Policy changes

In an upheaval of State planning policy the Qld Govt in a short period of time reviewed, amended and drafted new planning instruments. PRA wrote four separate submissions to four separate planning policies. We found ourselves commenting on draft amendments with various assurances that may mean very little because higher ranked planning policy had yet to be finalised. The drafts up for comment by submission contained repetitive terminology that was not defined and could be made to mean whatever. Although the policies claimed that agriculture was important, mining and coal seam gas activity was given a get out of jail card at every corner with phrases like, “no reasonable alternative.”

Instead of creating planning policy that would stand the test of time and be broad enough to cover all future circumstances the policies made heavy reference to coal seam gas and mining not in an effort to create a level playing field, but in a blatant effort to drive a mine truck or CSG drilling rig through the many loopholes.

 

The still yet to be defined co-existence was used as a cornerstone but there appears to be no circumstance where coexistence is not possible but rather agriculture has to fit in with the resource sector. The planning policies are creating new land classifications that have the effect of creating unnecessary complexity, confusion and watering down of farmer’s rights.

All agriculture based organisations addressed in detail the many points that were of concern in the submission processes only to be largely ignored. The universal dissatisfaction with the Qld government’s final position on these planning policies is evident in the following newspaper article: Farm 'protection' blasted.

 

Recent Property Rights cases

Joanne has been giving support via phone calls to a West Australian landowner who successfully defended a prosecution brought on by the WA Dept of environment & conservation (DEC). The case gained the interest of the IPA who issued the following media release: The case of Peter Swift will shock you

The case of the well reported locked gate on the access road to a Georgetown property is a case in point where all government departments seemed powerless to do anything about it in a timely manner. If you haven’t caught up with this case the locked gate wasn’t a landowner locking out a miner rather it was a miner who constructed a fence across an access road to a Georgetown cattle station. No government department was able to detect any illegal act so, it seems, were powerless to do anything. Since the Beef Central article, Mining company fences off NW Qld property, was written, PRA was able to direct the landowner to good legal advice. The case is still ongoing.

 

A landowner in Southern Queensland appealed to PRA for help in what is one of the worst abuses of property rights we have seen. We were only called in at 1 minute to midnight & were unable to achieve a lot due to some poor legal advice earlier in the case history and, left unguided, a couple of unfortunate decisions by the landowners. The agreement reached included a confidentiality clause. This case highlights that abuse of power perpetuated by quasi government corporations and the importance of obtaining specialist legal advice.

Open mineral exploration holes

Dale has taken a position on the committee of the Basin Sustainability Alliance. BSA works only in the area of coal seam gas and its position is very close to that of PRA.

Dale is giving support to a fellow committee member, water driller Ian Hansen, in his concerns about the many thousands poorly decommissioned exploration holes that could become pathways if a gasfield is constructed in the same locality and the coal measures are depressurised by removing water to allow the gas to travel.

 

Arrow through cockatoo’s tin hut

 

One important life lesson is that when you repeatedly don’t compete a task properly one day the consequences will come back to bite you on the butt. It may take many years but the agents of time, decay, cumulative impacts and the introduction of previously unknown factors makes a habit of doing a shoddy job a high probability to be a big problem in the future.

Career water driller Ian Hansen has been warning for many years of the problem in the waiting with Open mineral exploration holes. Ian first made this call long before what was that previously unknown factor, the coal seam gas industry, became known and just how wide spread it will be. Basin Sustainability Alliance (BSA) committee members received a call for help in an area north of Miles and what was found gives a good case study of the potential problem when you overlay extensive coal exploration drilling with the emerging coal seam gas industry. This is the case of Cockatoo Coal Tin Hut area and the Arrow CSG tenement that now contains the Kedron and Castledean pilot gas fields.

On the 12^th September, the day following the launch of CSG Net, a community-based stock bore motoring initiative, south of Wallumbilla, BSA facilitated the visit of Ian Heiner who heads the CSG Compliance Unit and David Free, chief hydrogeologist with the CSG Compliance Unit's groundwater investigation and assessment team (GIAT) to a meeting with a group of concern landowners north of Miles who gathered at the house of Bruce and Pat Hooper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Cockatoo in a couple of series drilled a 250 metre grid paten in the aim to apply for a mining lease. Following the wet season in 2011 Bruce and Pat Hooper found many sink holes at the drill sites on their property. The original rehabilitation conducted on the Hooper’s property was of a standard observed widespread by different exploration companies in various locations. The PVC which is used as a casing in the upper soil profiles only is broken off most often by a bobcat that digs down a bit and snaps it off, after which the site is levelled. 

Image sourced [here]

Cockatoo did respond to the complaints and revisiting the drill sites on the Hooper’s property to conduct further work. Upon completion Cockatoo supplied documentation including a series of photos to show how they were going beyond the legislative requirements to keep the Hooper’s happy. It is rather telling when “world’s best practice” is to cut off the PVC pipe and empty 2 small bags of the pre-mix cement + sand and then fill dirt over it without having added water to the pre-mix cement powder. The Cockatoo document states 87 drill sites were identified on the property of which 16 were not able to be found and 4 more were treated differently because of Arrows Energy were now conducting activity on the property, 2 of  the drill holes were in Arrow’s dam area.

Now keep in mind that these drill holes had GPS readings taken and the last series of drilling was only one year prior. What about the many other holes drilled before GPS became available? David Free of GIAT told the gathering that there are 30,000 uncapped exploration holes in the Surat Basin and 100,000 in the Bowen Basin. David also made the statement that, “Whenever you have an open hole unsealed from top to bottom, you are providing a pathway”.  BSA believes that this is a very important issue; just what happens when you overlay the mineral exploration activity with a CSG field where the coal measures are depressurised to allow the gas to freely travel. The soil over the top even settled with time will not stop methane. The casing only goes down a few lengths. It allows for the intermingling of any aquifer or small stream above the coal measures.

Arrow has the petroleum tenement over the same area as the Cockatoo coal tin hut area. Already Arrow has two pilot coal seam gas fields; Kedron on the Hooper’s property and Castledean which is just south of the tin hut area.

Responding to BSA concerns in an article published at Beef Central, Abandoned exploration holes must be plugged, the office of the minister for Natural Resources and Mines, Andrew Cripps made the follow statements:

“The drilling of both CSG wells and coal exploration holes has been strictly regulated since the January 1 2005 under both the Petroleum and Gas Act and the Coal Mining Safety and Health Act. “There are also provisions contained in the Environmental Protection Act relating to the proper remediation of coal exploration holes.

“Under this legislation, companies are required to properly remediate disused P&G and coal exploration holes in line with established “plugging and abandonment” criteria, to ensure there is no interconnection between aquifers.” 

 

 

 

Amongst the other concerned landowners who came to talk to the CSG Compliance Unit included some whom Cockatoo did not do any rehabilitation on the holes at all. When the drill rig pulled out in July 2010 to when these photos were taken in September 2013 nothing had been done. Cockatoo owns two futher properties in the area and the locals doubt if rehabilitation was conducted on these properties. In the three plus years the wattle has grown back higher than your head and there is a high fuel load of grass thanks to the good summers in 2010 and 2011. Left alone Arrow could develop its full blown gas field with a well 50 metres away or even closer and not be aware of the open exploration holes. The scenario would far too easily develop where this new gas field would depressurise the coal measures making the gas free to move and on the surface a high fuel load experience what is normal in Australian landscapes - fire.

Another life lesson is that if you deny or ignore a problem, it won’t go away 

Previous related article - CSG: Open mineral exploration holes
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CSG: Open mineral exploration holes

By Ian Hansen

If the water is removed from the coal seams as planned over such a vast area of Queensland we are going to see uncontrollable volumes of gas leak from open mineral exploration test holes and we will also witness the depletion of many of our aquifers via these holes. This will be without a doubt the greatest environmental disaster ever on inland Queensland.

There are countless thousands of these holes left open and not sealed across the state.  There is no requirement for the mineral industry to record the location or any other information about these test holes to any authority so their whereabouts, depth and formations drilled through is mostly unknown making it impossible to predict the interconnection between the aquifers by any hydrologist.

Yet the government and the department still refuse to regulate or place controls on the mineral exploration industry.  They show no respect or care for our ground water systems whatsoever.

Photo: Ian Hansen & his water drilling rig

I am a water driller and my career of 35 years has taken me across a large percentage of Queensland and I come across these holes nearly everywhere I go. I wish to raise some concerns I have with the integrity and the accuracy of the Queensland Water Commission Surat Underground Water Impact Report.

The Queensland Water Commission has made bold predictions on the impact the dewatering of the Walloons will have on other aquifers without taking into consideration these open test holes.  It is humanly impossible to calculate the effect they will have as there are no records available of these holes that may date back 50 to 60 years when portable rotary drilling rigs first became readily available. Also there is still no legislation today that requires the sealing of these holes drilled by mineral exploration drillers. Everyday another hole is drilled through these aquatards and left open their permeability is increased by an unpredictable degree.

In 1994 I was at a drilling seminar in Dalby where a senior hydrologist with the department of natural resources and mines presented a paper on the Abandonment of Test Holes and Bores.  Some of the points he made to why this is a very important practice to properly seal these holes are.

·         The elimination of physical hazards.

·         Prevent contamination of ground water.

·         Conserve yield and hydrostatic head of aquifers.

·         Prevent poor quality water beds mixing with good quality water beds.

 He also stated “All the care in the world with the construction of a production bore can be negated if test holes drilled in the vicinity are left open and not securely sealed”.

This was presented in 1994 long before the advent of coal seam gas which requires the dewatering of the Walloons to release the gas and in turn creates a huge pressure differential between the aquifers.

At every drillers meeting or seminar I have attended over the last 35 years this practice of the mineral exploration industry leaving holes open and not sealed has been mentioned and complained about, but the department and the government continue to refuse to act on this situation. 

If I as a licensed water driller were to leave a hole open and in this condition I would be prosecuted and be fined a possible $50,000 by the department because of the risks I would create to our ground water supplies. Yet the same department says it is OK for mineral exploration drillers to leave test holes in this condition.  They apparently don’t create the same risks.

The department of natural resources and mines along with the state government have over the years placed many restrictions on ground water use and also the drilling of new water bores in an effort to save our so precious ground water reserves. The most recent being a moratorium on the drilling of new water bores in towns within the Murray Darling catchment because the water system has been over allocated.

This is a very hypocritical view of the department and the government because with the dewatering of the coal seams it is only going to take one of these exploration holes that are left open through a multiple aquifer system to deplete very large volumes of water from any one system.

I have had reports from employees on exploration rigs where they have been core sampling at 800 meters and when they were finished they just pack up and drive away and leave the holes open.

It will only take one hole left open through the Condamine Alluvium to the Walloon coal seams to delete more water from the Alluvium aquifers than all the stock and domestic bores within this system put together.

One hole through the Bungle and Mooga formations, the Gubberamunda or the Springbok formations would be capable of leaking enough water to have a serious impact on any one of these aquifers with the dewatering of the coal seams.

Any holes drilled into the Huttons will also cause serious losses from this formation as the Huttons are under a great deal of pressure. At 600 meters the vertical upward pressure of the Huttons would be in excess of 800p.s.i.





























Image sourced from Surat underground water impact report

I know first-hand how tight and dense these shale layers or aquatards are as I have drilled through them many times constructing water bores. But they are of no value as a confining layer when drilled full of holes and left open.

In the Surat Underground Water Impact Report it states
"The degree of interaction between the coal units which form part of the Walloon Coal Measures and the overlying and underlying aquifers is directly influenced by the vertical permeability and the thickness of the aquatard layers."

 So as the water table is lowered within the Wallooons to release the gas there will be an uncontrollable movement of water through these aquatards via the countless thousands of holes that have been drilled and left open by the exploration drillers.

Also as the gas pressure increases due to the lowering of the water table there will be uncontrollable volumes of gas able to escape to the atmosphere via these same holes.

Therefore this Surat Underground Water Impact report has little credibility. Not until every hole is located and sealed to a satisfactory standard could any hydrology report carry any credit at all.

UPDATE #1
Follow up article - Arrow through cockatoo’s tin hut
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