Friday 1 August 2014

Is the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association playing dirty online?


This breathtakingly misleading article appeared at Upstreamonline on 23 June 2014:

Click on image to enlarge

Bianca Bartucciotto, who elsewhere describes herself as a journalist-in-training, writes on the oil and gas industry.

However, she obviously hasn’t done her homework as the court has not ruled in coal seam/tight gas exploration and mining company Metgasco Limited’s favour in Metgasco Ltd v Minister for Resources & Energy [2014] NSWSC. 

On the date this Upstream article was posted legal proceedings had not moved much beyond the NSW Government’s formal response to the amended summons, submitted to the court by Metgasco on or about 7 July 2014.

In fact, as Metgasco, APPEA and presumably Ms. Bartucciotto are aware, no evidence will be heard in this matter until October this year at the earliest.

One can be forgiven for harbouring a suspicion that Ms. Bartucciotto relationship with the Australian gas industry is closer than that of a reporting journalist writing for an industry newspaper:


In fact, whether the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (APPEA) or members of its board are shareholders in the NHST Media Group, which owns the Upstream website she writes for, is a question hanging in the air right now.

NHST Media Group is certainly listed on the website for the forthcoming May 2015 APPEA Conference & Exhibition as its Upstream business was the official supplier of leading events in the sector, e.g. ONS in Stavanger, the World Petroleum Congress in Moscow and Appea in Perth in Australia.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Looks like someone was trying to give Metgasco's share price a leg up