Metgasco's CEO bags the NSW Premier and again distorts the history of community concerns relating to the coal seam gas industry

 

Metgasco’s CEO Peter Henderson must be laughing up his sleeve at the mainstream media when it fails yet again to challenge his more outrageous distortions concerning community opposition to coal seam gas exploration and mining.

 

On 21 February 2013 ABC North Coast Radio broadcast this interview in which he baldly states that; “The coal seam gas industry has been operating in Australia now producing gas for more than sixteen years. Until Gasland [a documentary film] came along there was never squeak of concern.”

 

So no community in Australia was worried about coal seam gas until a film was shown at the US Sundance Film Festival in January 2010 and then released into Australian cinemas on 18 November that same year?

 

Unfortunately for Mr. Henderson’s attempts to create an alternative history, this was published in January 2005; COAL BED METHANE HAZARDS IN NEW SOUTH WALES by a NSW Central Coast action group established circa 2004 with this aim:

Our most precious resource is water. Our mission is to guarantee its integrity, and prevent loss of groundwater and contamination of surface water from methane gas mining.

And the Hunter-Bulga Gas Action Group Inc. was in active in March 2007 offering to organise free legal advice for landowners.

While the Caroona Coal Action Group was alive and well before the documentary film was first screened and, the group had this posted on its website on 4 July 2009:

 

Rosemary Nankivell highlights dangers of CSM in this Northern Daily Leader article July 09. Environmental Hazards.

Methane gas exploration and extraction has caused irreparable environmental, social and economic damage across the world. This report shows how gas exploration destroys fresh water supplies slowly but surely and how much of the geological understanding claimed by gas companies is actually guess work. The same will happen to us if we don’t stop it now. Here's what's already happened at Narrabri (p.11-13)

A project operated by Sydney Gas was stopped by ‘people power’ in the Yarramalong and Dooralong Valleys because of scientific concerns coal seam gas (CSG) extraction would ruin drinking water and agricultural supplies for the Central Coast. An executive summary of their concerns is here...

they are the same concerns we have on the Liverpool Plains. [Full report here]…..

Gas extraction will damage our own water supplies and those feeding into the Murray Darling Basin:-
• by contaminating town water supplies, aquifers and stock bores
• by extracting water with gas lowering the water tables
• by creating vast quantities of waste water
• by exploring along the stressed Hunter-Mooki fault systems……

 

By 22 October 2009 the ABC television program Catalyst canvassed concerns:

 

NARRATION
It’s not surprising that here, on the fertile soils at the top of the Murray-Darling basin, farmers are sensitive about salinity.

IAN HAYLLOR
Now we’re seeing these gas companies bringing up millions of tonnes of salts, storing it on the surface, and the government hasn’t got a plan for it. It’s just … oh we’ll put it in storage and we’ll bury it and forget about it. Well salt doesn’t go away. It’s there forever……

Our concern for the future is the impact of the coal seam gas extraction is taking water out below our aquifer and you know some hydrologists are saying there’s a link between our aquifer and the coal aquifer. Um, the mining companies and the government are saying there’s not. Um, you know, who do you believe?

 

Concerns about coal seam gas were so well-known that on 7 December 2009 The Sydney Morning Herald reported:

 

And now there is a new complication: regulatory costs related to environmental issues. Until recently, the CSG industry was seen as an environmentally friendly energy, but farmers and environmental campaigners are concerned about the potential damage to waterways and crop land and the impact of the disposal of salt produced during the CSG extraction process.

Until recently, the water extracted during the coal seam gas process was pumped into ponds, where it would evaporate. But this technique was recently frowned on by the Queensland Government because it was creating ponds of salt.

This has forced companies including Santos to search for alternative solutions.

A report released on Friday following a Senate inquiry into the impact of CSG in the country's most important agricultural area, the Murray-Darling Basin, links CSG with Australia's most sensitive environmental subject, water.

After receiving numerous submissions from environmental groups highlighting concerns, the report recommends as a matter of priority, and preferably before the release of future mineral exploration licences, that state governments establish regional water plans in areas potentially subject to mining or extractive industry operations.

 

Perhaps NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell should keep in mind this company's loose relationship with fact if and when Metgasco meets with him. He might also like to note that Mr. Henderson thinks he and his Cabinet have been making policy on the run made in half hour or an hour.