October 2012

The coal seam gas industry came to the Northern Rivers region of NSW almost a decade ago in the form of Metgasco, a company that talked about exploring for a 'clean' fuel that, if discovered, would lead to a local power station that would provide the region with jobs, increased economic security, and endless clean electricity.

Slowly but steadily Metgasco inveigled its way into the community's confidence, connecting with local Chambers of Commerce, and obtaining access to properties to search for gas in operations that, they assured, would only impact on a piece of land the size of a tennis court, which would then be rehabilitated when they had finished.

By 2009 several things had happened that set alarm bells ringing. Firstly, Metgasco put forward plans to construct a pipeline through the Border Ranges World Heritage Area to Brisbane, a clear indication that much of our 'lovely clean gas' would go elsewhere. Other plans to complete a pipeline from south east Queensland to Rockhampton for gas export to Asia added another piece to the jigsaw puzzle.

The second event was Transgrid's announcement of a plan to build a major electricity transmission line from Tenterfield to Casino to allow more electricity to be fed into the area from generators in the Hunter Valley. This, they told us, was because projected population growth would outstrip the ability of existing supply lines to provide power. So why would they need more imported electricity when there was a plan to build a substantial gas powered plant here? The only reasonable answer was that Transgrid didn't believe there would be any gas fired power station.

At around that time, the Acadamy Award-winning documentary, 'Gasland', was released in the USA detailing horrors beyond belief, and all to do with something called fracking. Gasland went viral, and it didn't take long for it to reach Australia, It was a dramatic wake-up call.

UNCONVENTIONAL GAS MINING An environmental and social disaster in the making.

A typical export gas facility

Gasland's message was clear: People and livestock were getting sick, rivers and wells became toxic, underground water was becoming polluted, and methane was coming through the water pipes allowing people to set fire to their taps.

There were stories of farms being rendered unproductive, communities in crisis, and leaking well heads that could not be plugged, because the gas companies that had caused the problems had moved on and could not be held responsible.

There were confidentiality clauses in contracts between landowners and the miners, and if landowners were successful in claiming compensation for polluted a polluted well for example, it would be on the understanding that they would not divulge the details. A tried and true way of ensuring there is never any documented “evidence” of an “event”, allowing gas companies even today, years later, to claim there is no evidence that unconventional gas mining has ever damaged water supplies.

This was made easier by the fact that no baseline water testing and recording was done, and as a result there is no complete data base of pollution incidents, or of well failures and other problems. This fact was released in the findings of an official report to the European Commission for the Environment that was released in August 2012 (AEA reference: Ref: ED57281- Issue Number 17).

Australian gas companies were quick to respond – the USA gas mining was shale gas, while ours was coal seam gas, completely different and irrelevant, they said! Also, Australian regulations are more stringent than those in the US and, of course, the makers of Gasland had exaggerated and twisted the truth, or simply got it wrong.

Then similar stories began to emerge from Queensland. Water bores were being depleted and contaminated, toxic cocktails of chemicals, many of which had not been approved for use in Australia, were being used in the fracking process, and people were suffering from rashes, headaches and nose bleeds, which they believed were caused from bathing in contaminated bore water and constantly inhaling methane vapour ((http://econews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/AMA-Queenslands-Dr-Christian-Rowan.jpg)).

A Google Earth vision of a 20km x 10km shale gas field in Sonora, Texas. Each white dot represents the cleared area around each gas well head, close to 1,000 wells in all. Metgasco plans a similar number for Casino.

Metgasco again tried to distance itself from these events. Some Queensland operators were 'cowboys', laws in that state are different to those in NSW, and they didn't use the same fracking chemicals.

These excuses were becoming too thin for residents in the Northern Rivers, and local resistance began to build. Investigations, not by the mining company or our pollution watchdog of course, but by local activists, found 10% of supposedly sealed exploration wells in the Lismore District were leaking methane. Metgasco remained emphatic in its claims, but introduced another word to its rhetoric, “unmanageable”.

Now they claimed that there was no evidence of any “unmanageable” problems. Leaks could be plugged, and spills cleaned up. There was no proof that the contaminated bore water in Queensland, which a 60 Minutes TV investigation found could be ignited, had anything to do with the gas mining, and methane leaking from the bed of the Condomine River was a natural phenomenon.

The NSW Government was, and still is, right behind the industry, passing legislation that gave gas companies a royalty free holiday for the first 5 years of a well's production, and royalties would then be slowly raised for the next 5 years until the full rate would be paid after 10 years. As the average well life is only about 15 years, gas companies could expect a 50% cut in royalties. Not a bad deal at all!

There were reports of significant clearing of forests in the Pilliga State Conservation Area where another gas company, Eastern Star Gas, was 'exploring' for gas. One farmer reported his livestock were refusing to drink from his water supply, something the gas company unsuccessfully tried to blame on the farmer's overuse of agricultural chemicals.

An aerial view of a recently constructed gas field near Chinchilla, in south east Queensland where health issues have emerged.

Another Pilliga landholder reported a massive toxic spill from a produced water holding pond that had resulted in the death of all plant life along a significant length of drainage line. The Company tried to sue the landowner for trespass, but the case went nowhere as they are operating on public land.

The rush by the coal seam gas industry to set up business in NSW has galvanised the community in a manner seldom seen before. It started when more than 6,000 people from all walks of life gathered to protest outside State Parliament in Macquarie St.

This was followed by protest marches across coastal NSW with more than 7,000 turning out at Lismore. Local Government Elections saw a referendum in the Lismore electorate where 85% of respondents said NO to coal seam gas.

In early October 2012, the gas exploration company, Red Sky Energy claimed its pilot gas production well north of Whiporie will tap into “conventional” gas reserves, when only a few

months previously it had released a report claiming their exploratory drilling had identified unconventional gas.

The Northern Rivers contingent gathers prior to the march on parliament House.

An aerial view of a pilot production gas field in the Pilliga Forest which has was suspended by new owners , following revelations of widespread

pollution breaches by previous owners, Eastern Star Gas.

Confusion reigns: Natural gas, conventional and unconventional gas, coal seam, shale and tight sands gas; what does it all mean? There were accusations from the industry of misinformation being peddled by opponents, and counter accusations that the industry is deliberately hiding the truth.

However, it is significant to note that, despite the industry conceding that it had let itself down by failing to get its own message out about how safe their operations are, they have never made any approach to the Clarence Environment Centre, or the umbrella environmental organisation, the North Coast Environment Council, asking for the opportunity to meet so they can explain their side of the story.

So a simple explanation of the commonly mined gasses is in order. Conventional gas or natural gas, are one and the same, methane, unlike the liquid petroleum gas commonly delivered to households in cylinders for cooking and heating which is butane.

Some residents in more heavily populated areas of NSW do have natural methane gas piped directly into their homes, and this is piped in from South Australian gas fields. That conventional gas comes from large underground reservoirs of trapped methane which has seeped out of the coal seams over millions of years, and which can be pumped out through a relatively small number of well heads, and usually remain productive for many decades before the source is depleted.

Unconventional gas is also methane, but which has remained trapped in the coal seams (coal seam gas) or, rather than accumulating in large reservoirs, has seeped out over time and become trapped in other underground shale deposits (shale gas) or, as is the case in the Clarence Valley, in layers of sedimentary sandstone (tight sand gas).

All these unconventional deposits require some level of “stimulus”, i.e breaking up the underground rock layers to release the gas, usually using a technique called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”.

Fracking is a process that incorporates technology which allows drilling vertically until reaching the gas seams, then drilling horizontally along the rock seam in any direction (see drawing below). The fracking involves the of pumping water with sand and chemicals into the rock under enormous pressure, forcing the rock to fracture and crack open, The sand is injected into the cracks to keep them open, and the process involves huge machines reported to have in the region of 10,000 horsepower.

There are also chemicals needed to cool the drilling bit. In NSW some of the chemicals being used in Queensland have been banned, however, other than claiming that the chemicals used in NSW are no worse than those found under the average kitchen sink, mining companies are tight lipped about what chemicals they use. Needless to say, few would care to drink any chemicals stored under the sink, and the thought of them being injected underground into our water supplies is not appealing.

Sandstone gas deposits are referred to as “tight sand”, and because sandstone is generally denser than coal shale, the required level of fracking is increased, and the process may have to be repeated several times during the life of the well, which is generally about 15 years.

Because there is a limit to the distance horizontal drilling can be undertaken, unconventional gas extraction requires multiple well heads across each gas field, all connected by pipelines and roads (Metgasco plans to drill 1,000 wells in the Casino district alone).

The multiple well-heads, horizontal drilling, fracking and introduction of chemicals, all contribute to an increased risk of disruption and pollution of underground water, with a major risk of methane leaking into adjoining aquifers along the cracks caused by the fracking, something that has seen some Queensland water bores spewing out more gas than water, allowing them to be set alight.

A simple illustration of what horizontal drilling, and cracks in rocks following fracking looks like, and the connection to underground water reserves.

Fracking also leads to methane leaking up to ground level and directly into the atmosphere. Referred to as “fugitive emissions”, these go largely undetected and are entirely unmeasurable. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, so these fugitive emissions are making a significant contribution to climate change.

The extraction process has another major problem – the production of large amounts of what is referred to as “produced water”. This is the water that is removed from the coal or shale deposits, and is strongly saline and often toxic, a condition that is not helped by the addition of fracking chemicals and drilling fluids. To gain some idea of the volumes of water involved, the Pilliga gas field is predicted to produce 90,000Ml. This water has to be treated. Diesel driven reverse osmosis (a desalination plant) is commonly used, and the residual toxic sludge has to be disposed of, altogether a highly energy intensive process.

Spillages are commonplace. Every well has its own plastic lined holding pond which, when full, has to be transported by tankers to huge holding or evaporation ponds for treatment. The plastic is easily punctured by wallaby feet for example, something found to be happening on the northern rivers, and ponds can overflow during heavy rain events, as was the case during the recent Queensland floods, when they were forced to release significant amounts of produced water into the rivers.

A typical evaporation pond. Similar ponds overflowed in the 2011 Queensland floods and their highly toxic contents were released into local river systems, and spread

along their entire length, and ultimately into the ocean.

An unconventional gas well is closed down when gas flows drop to commercially unviable levels, and after some 15 years of production the well is sealed to prevent the remaining methane from escaping. However, fugitive emissions will continue to flow, and the cement casings that line the borehole will all fail over time. In the USA it has been found that upwards of 50% of sealed wells were leaking within 8 years of being abandoned, meaning they will forever be leaking methane into the atmosphere.

There is, in our opinion, a bottom line to all of this. In January 2012, the International Energy Agency warned the world that we are on track for a 6 degrees of warming within 90 years if we do not immediately transition to non-polluting renewable energy. That is the catastrophic level of climate change that we plan to bequeath to our grandchildren when we burn this unconventional gas.

There is little doubt that Australian Governments are working in a knowledge vacuum when it comes to unconventional gas mining. Federal Senator Bill Heffernan made the pertinent comment at a symposium on the gas industry in late October, 2012 that “when you are driving in fog, you slow down”. There is no sign of the NSW Government doing any such thing.

The Precautionary Principle, which underpins Ecologically Sustainable Development, makes the clear edict, that scientific uncertainty should not be used to justify proceeding with a project. In the case of unconventional gas mining there is a rapidly building mass of scientific certainty that it is one of the most dangerous and risky industries the world has ever encountered.

What is not being adequately considered is the fact that, when all the components of the unconventional gas production process are collated, the carbon footprint is at least equivalent to, if not greater, than the burning of coal. This is not a clean energy source, and the NSW Government knows that, because the report from their Inquiry into CSG in mid 2012, identified that very fact.

So the bottom line is, we simply should not be burning unconventional gas or coal if we want our grandchildren to have any sort of a future. Therefore, we urgently need a responsible government to make a responsible decision, and put a stop to this deadly industry.

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