The coal seam gas industry promotes itself as a cleaner carbon-fuel alternative; but how do we know this is true? Until now much of the information used to back this claim has come from the industry itself. http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2013/04/01/3725150.htm
Coal seam gas has the potential to make Australia an energy superpower, but at what price? http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2013/01/20131771222674145.html
As the fracking question gathers momentum in the US – are we glimpsing an Australian future? http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2012/s3441606.htm
As public sentiment shifts against the sector, NSW’s biggest coal seam gas companies are busier than ever safeguarding their billion dollar babies with the help of high profile and well connected lobbyists.
Together the big CSG players — Metgasco, Santos and AGL — have seven separate lobby firms working for them, more than doubling their clout behind the scenes.
“The largest single water user in the industrialised world is the energy industry. Prodigious amounts are needed to produce nearly every type of electricity and transport fuel across the energy value chain . . .
The link between energy and water is rarely discussed, yet is of huge consequence.
It is strange, strange, strange that when it comes to the most important subject on the planet, the basis of all life – water – governments, international agencies, economists, scientists and businesses have consistently underestimated the growth in global demand, and the growing stress on supply.”
Did you know:
• it is estimated there will be 40,000 coal seam gas wells in Australia
• conservative estimates suggest coal seam gas wells could draw 300 gigalitres of water from the ground each year?
• the industry could produce as much greenhouse gas as all the cars on the road in Australia?
• modelling suggests the industry could produce 31 million tonnes of waste salt over the next 30 years?
First Eastern Star Gas, and then Santos, failed to report a 10,000-litre spill of toxic saline water from their CSG operation in the Pilliga State Forest. The State govt. says there is “potential for prosecution”.
Mr McLindon, a former LNP member and sitting Beaudesert MP, said he had joined the blockade because he shared the residents’ concerns about the mining practice.
“The coal seam gas threat has well and truly reached the heart of the Scenic Rim as the foreign-owned company, Arrow Energy, rolls out its exploration permits,” Mr McLindon said on Friday.
Walgett schoolteacher, Mr Robins, said the protesters wanted baseline water tests to be conducted on local aquifers before drilling was allowed to begin.
“We need to know what is in there now, because after drilling, once it’s contaminated we have to know who is responsible,” he said.
The Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted a survey of 10,000 square miles of sea off the coast of eastern Siberia. They made a terrifying discovery – huge plumes of methane bubbles rising to the surface from the seabed.
‘We found more than 100 fountains, some more than a kilometre across,’ said Dr Igor Semiletov, ‘These are methane fields on a scale not seen before. The emissions went directly into the atmosphere.’
MEDIA RELEASE: Last Thursday, 15 December 2011, approximately fifty people attended the ‘What Is In Our Water Forum’ at the Walgett RSL Memorial Hall. This meeting was organised by Lock The Gate Walgett, a group of concerned community members who wish to raise awareness about the risks and dangers associated with coal seam gas mining in NSW.
Alan Jones comments on protecting our land