Gas meeting fails to fire

Greens Senator-elect Lee Rhiannon, NSW Farmers Association Mining Taskforce chair Fiona Simson and Alstonville NSW Farmers Association delegate Kath Robb.

An information meeting at the Casino RSM Club by Metgasco, organised by Casino Rotary, left many audience members feeling dissatisfied last Monday.

Approximately 200 people listened to presentations from four senior Metgasco staff members: executive director Glenda McLoughlin, general manager of exploration Peter Stanmore, operations manager Aidan Stewart and chief operating officer Mick O’Brien.

NSW Farmers Association mining Taskforce chair Fiona Simson was left feeling like the meeting hadn’t really addressed people’s concerns, as questions about specific numbers of wells and access agreements weren’t answered.

“The community wants to know figures and facts,” she said. “In Queensland and in the US, there are 70-80 wells on some farms.

“There needs to be a certain number for it to be a viable gas field, so it was a reasonable question about the number of wells and deserved an answer.

“Community consultation needs to be two-way.

“I think there would have been a general feeling tonight that people weren’t told the full story.”

Tony Hennessy, who was invited to chair the meeting by Casino Rotary, received the biggest boo of the evening for his dismissal of Alstonville’s elected NSW Farmers Association delegate Kath Robb.

Mrs Robb wanted to know about the restrictions Local Environmental Plans could have over mining activities and what would happen if, in relation to the proposed pipeline from the Northern Rivers to Queensland, two adjoining farms refused to sign voluntary access agreements.

In answer to other questions regarding access Ms McLoughlin repeated the statement “all our access agreements are voluntary” but did not elaborate about what might happen in the situation outlined by Mrs Robb.

“Sometimes you learn more from what people don’t say,” Mrs Robb told The Echo after the meeting.

Greens Senator-elect Lee Rhiannon agreed with Mrs Robb and Mrs Simson that the meeting had been less than satisfying.

“They avoided some important questions, particularly about access agreements,” she said.

Aiden Stewart did go into detail about the drilling and exploration methods used by Metgasco, including giving an explanation of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), which ended with the statement that “we don’t use fracking in coal seam gas exploration”.

On page 4 of Metgasco’s half-yearly financial report which was released this week, in a paragraph regarding the conventional gas Kingfisher well, which is licensed for fracking, it states:

“Metgasco then intends to perforate additional upper zones and evaluate the well for completion as a producer.”

Mr Stewart said fracking was one of several methods Metgasco could use for that process.

“We have trialled one frack, but we need to make the distinction between conventional gas and coal seam gas,” Mr Stewart said. “There is a quite large body of evidence on the effects of hydraulic fracturing on conventional gas. In the Cooper Basin (SA) and over in Western Australia it’s got quite a long history.

“One of the other methods we could use is to just perforate them with perforation charges fired off at various different depths.

“Perforation is standard procedure. You perforate the casing to produce the well.

“Hydraulic fracturing has been used a lot in the past with coal bed and conventional gas, now in the States they are using it to get gas from shale, that’s what the documentary (Gaslands) refers to. What America is doing is using directional drilling with a large volume of hydraulic fracking because of the properties of shale, which is so much harder so much more impermeable.”

The financial report included references to a total amount of coal seam and conventional gas reserves that “would be sufficient to supply up to a three million tonne per annum LNG plant over a 20 year contract term.”

The company is evaluating export options, including a pipeline to Gladstone, a sub-sea pipeline to an offshore floating LNG facility, and a field development plan for the supply of 90 petajoules of gas per annum to an LNG project.