The Editor

Northern Daily Leader

Dear Sir, Your readers by now would be well aware Santos removed some of their misleading advertisements that were shown on electronic media, but may not know of the ongoing similar deception practiced by Santos in print media as well.

Recently Santos Manager of Community and Government Relations, Sam Crafter , wrote in glowing terms of the Santos promotion of the yet to be completed Namoi Catchment Water Study into the effects of Coal and Coal Seam Gas extraction. Mr Crafter on behalf of Santos would have readers believe that the Study as it stands is complete;  “catchment wide”, “thorough” and includes “the more extreme hypothetical scenarios”.

The Study is not complete. It does not include the approved modelling of the accelerated Scenario 7(otherwise known as the Hunter Valley option!) and since it has yet to be peer reviewed it would be irresponsible and misleading to suggest otherwise.

The Study is a remarkable achievement in that it is the first study to be attempted on such a scale. However, it didn’t cover all the catchment, and there are significant gaps in the Study, hence we consider it essential Namoi CMA are required to continue the work collating all new research data to be provided by coal and CSG companies before any new projects are given the go ahead.

The reality is that the Namoi Catchment Water Study only models a fraction of the Namoi Catchment and is far from “thorough” with no modelling of key issues that are called for in its Terms of Reference such as effects on water quality and surface flows. There is also no attempt to model the effects on natural springs, so critical to the community throughout the Namoi Catchment.

As of Monday last week(12th November) the Model Mr Crafter refers to as Scenario 7 has not even been released and its shows a clear lack of credibility by  Santos to allow him to say “Even in the more extreme hypothetical scenarios CSG impacts are still minimal and less than the background water use”. Santos may care to explain how they have that information?

Santos has been held up to the agricultural industry as a highly professional gas company, responsible, compliant with best practice and willing to engage with farmers honestly. Unfortunately the evidence is building that shows Santos is failing to meet these standards.

Earlier this year Santos released an economic report stating “a once in a lifetime economic benefit” would result from developing Coal Seam Gas in the Namoi.  The Australia Institute reviewed this report and found it fails as a proper economic assessment revealing the benefits to the local economy would be quite small.

Santos also announced a landholder compensation scheme promising much largesse for farmers, $150 million over 10 years. An analysis of these figures suggest  the actual compensation of $3000 per well pad to be no match for the negative impacts that result from coal seam gas impacts on water and soil resources. The resulting devaluation of the property and neighbouring properties was excluded.

Further to this Santos also claimed the majority of environmental damage done in the Pilliga area was the responsibility of Eastern Star Gas, yet as a 35% shareholder in ESG and as a major parent company involved in gas production this flimsy flick pass is unacceptable to even the most naive.  Santos has been fined for environmental contamination incidents in the Pilliga from their own operations post Eastern Star Gas.

Last, but not least, the latest advertising campaign promoting that Santos does and can co-exist with Agriculture in our region has taken a major blow as the spin was revealed. The farmer is not really a farmer from the Liverpool plains, he doesn’t grow Canola or Cotton, nor can Santos be attributed with finding water for Goran Lake!

The future of the Namoi Catchment and the security of its water resources faces many uncertainties. There is a lot of work to be done regarding the development of Coal and Coal Seam Gas in our valley and it will require a foundation of rigorous science, frank and honest discussions, respect and above all, a co-operative environment amongst all stakeholders, if these industries are to proceed in Australia’s most productive food producing region.

Yours faithfully,

Hugh Price

Chairman – Namoi Community Network

19/11/2012

Report from Santos meeting at Mullaley courtesy David Quince

Peter Mitchley, General Manager Energy NSW from Santos made a commitment to landholders at a meeting on Thursday 15 November , 7:30am at Mullaley Town Hall.

He committed that he would go back and ask his immediate superiors that the community of Mullaley and surrounds had requested as an act of good faith that instead of Santos going ahead with their announced drilling plans and expansion for the industry, that Santos would cease and desist until such a time as the issues bought to their attention at this meeting on 15 November 2012 could be addressed.

These issues were:

• Water issues: Well integrity is not secure. The NSW Government Govt paper on well integrity is flawed – was peer reviewed by a bore driller and they couldn’t see that the paper could be correct, not possible to evenly apply the cement, strength of cement, no reinforcing.
• Contamination of our aquifers.
• Concerns about the reinjection of coal seam water.
• Health impacts of spillages and methane emissions in the region.
• The devaluation of country and properties.

At this Mullaley meeting, Santos committed to paying for independent baseline forensic water testing and baseline fugitive emissions monitoring across the region.

The community passed a motion at the meeting, a unanimous statement by the community that Santos was not welcome in the area.

The recent misleading Santos ads inflamed the situation in the region.

Also raised at this meeting was Santos Environmental record with the company Brantos ,that they held a 19% share in the company and were the ones not only supplying the technical expertise but overseeing the actual drilling which caused the mud volcanoes in Indonesia which not only claimed lives but also has displaced over 40,000 Indonesians which has still has not been rectified .

The community viewed Santos with complete disdain at Santos’ indifference and coldness in response to the plight of the elderly gentleman who spoke up at the meeting. He was diagnosed with cancer three years prior and tried to sell his property, but couldn’t get a decent price for the property due to the coal seam gas threat over the property. Santos’ indifference to this personal experience showed they are clearly not ‘all about people’ as they falsely claim.

Things are starting to go wrong for coal and gas. A slump in commodities prices has taken the heat out of the market sparking mine closures and project delays. Now the information flow has turned decidedly negative. New reports into the science, the economics and the corrupt politics emerge daily and although the NSW government has its head in the sand, cracks are beginning to show.

Information concerning the level of the states finances has been shown to be incorrect by the Auditor General. The budget cutbacks to the government departments, CMA’s etc and the fast tracking of fossil fuel projects appear to be ideologically based rather than due to the dire warnings from Treasury.

This week three major reports into the impacts of coal and gas mining have been released and this is on the back of the ongoing ICAC inquiry and the earlier report into Coal Harms from the University of Sydney.

The Sydney Uni  report is still causing shockwaves in the Hunter Valley as Federal Politicians are coming out in favor of a Parliamentary Inquiry into the health impacts from coal.

On Tuesday the report by Prof John Williams entitled the Analysis of CSG Production and Natural Resource Management said that “it is clear that potential impacts on water resources are significant” and these impacts “require very careful attention, and merit being the focus of much public concern”.

On Wednesday the release of the fugitive and migratory emissions measurements by Southern Cross University in the Tara Estates in Queensland has found greenhouse gas emissions three times higher than nearby districts. According to researchers, the methane gas is “leaking up through the soil and bubbling up through rivers at an astonishing rate”.

The measurement of these emissions is important as the carbon price on such emissions could effectively shut down the industry.

Also on Wednesday, the “Beating around the Bush” report from the Australia Institute shows the impact of the mining boom on our agricultural Industries and our regional communities from a historically high Aussie Dollar.

The report shows that the impacts of the high exchange rate have slashed $43.5 billion from rural export income since the beginning of the mining boom and $14.9 billion in 2010 – 2011. This directly impacts regional Australia as the profits and the input dollars from rural industries stay in regional economies rather than flow to large corporate contractors and foreign owned share holders.

The Australia Institute report concludes that the mining boom has not been managed well.

Meanwhile in the big smoke, the ICAC enquiry heard that both Premiers Rees and Iemma were bought down by allegedly corrupt coal interests. The politics behind local projects in the North West are also murky and in response the current Planning Minister is running a hands off planning process whereby public servants are calling the shots.

All this is against a scenario described by the International Energy Agency’s 2012 Outlook released this month. The Outlook found that at least two thirds of known fossil fuel reserves must never be mined if the world is to avoid the 2 degree average warming that will trigger catastrophic runaway climate change.

Joining the dots is troubling indeed, yet, the findings are in. Our health, our environment, the climate, the economy and now our political party system are threatened by conflicted or corrupted state governments, sectional interests and their risky industries.

Mining interests have always played the long game to ensure that mineral reserves are available in the future for mining. And governments have happily danced to their tune, yet there are two sides to this story.

In Queensland, the Newman Government is currently fueling this process in their new planning policy saying, that it wishes to protect mining reserves from “incompatible development” by planning incompatible land uses such as “urban development away from known reserves”.

The NSW approach began in the early 90’s with the little known report “Effects of Land Use on Coal Resources” from February 1994. Reading the report in August 2012 shows how the plans of coal interests inside the state bureaucracy are finally coming to fruition.

Brad Mullard, then Chairman of the Coal Resource Development Committee who co-authored the report found that there was insufficient accessible coal “to maintain production at the forecast levels beyond 2010”. It went on to say that the remaining coal in the state “is already affected by other land uses, particularly National Parks and prime agricultural land”.

The report said that future projects “were under threat from some other form of land use or could attract strong community opposition if mining were proposed. Action is required to ensure that these  …  resources will be available to meet the future needs of the coal industry”.

One such threat is “the power of veto by the landowner to exclude open cut mining from agricultural land’. This particularly so re Coal Seam Gas.

Unable to accept the situation, the CRDC recommended the “development of a multiple land use strategy for conservation areas” and the “protection of strategically important coal resources”.

Rather than recommend a compatible land use strategy, the 1994 report proposed multiple or sequential land use and this approach is a key driver of the land use conflict being waged today.

The multiple land use strategy which is now being translated into the Strategic Regional Land Use Policy has caused investment uncertainty in non mining industries such as agriculture and community anguish in areas identified with potential mineral reserves.

When one land use is already in place it is up to the new entrant to be compatible with the existing community and environment. This is the essence of social license and community acceptance.

For his efforts, Mr Mullard this year received a Public Service Medal for “his outstanding contribution to policy development, assessment and allocation of energy and mineral resources in NSW”.

Presumably, this policy is the one that is dividing the community and probably the cabinet right now.

At a consultation meeting, earlier this year in Gunnedah to help resolve the conflict, the Planning Minister himself described the incompatible land use of open cut mining and state forests as ”illogical” in front of 400 people. At a loss to explain the land use conflict he passed the issue over to his expert panel which included the now Executive Director of Mineral Resources NSW, Brad Mullard.

Given the opportunity to explain the multiple land use strategy and a resolution that could consider underground mining, the panel deferred the issue to the Planning Assessment Commission. The PAC recommended the Maules Creek mine the very next day. It is now known that the Chair of the PAC, Gabrielle Kibble, was the former CEO of the Department of Planning in 1994 and the department was represented on the original CRDC.

Importantly, the thrust of the 1994 CRDC report is being adopted by the O’Farrell government. The basic incompatibility of highly destructive extractive industries with productive farmland, bushland and water resources is being weighed against the benefits to sectional interests in the NSW Governments cabinet room now.

For those who wish to have their views heard, now is the time as the Strategic Regional Land Use and Aquifer Interference policies push forward to enshrine the last vestiges of a report which was founded in the thinking of last century.

http://www.otfordeco.com/coalseamgas/EffectsOfLandUseOnCoalResources1994byCoalResourcesCommittee.pdf

The NSW Government have used dodgy Part 3A planning processes to deny the community access to the Land & Environment Court for both the Boggabri Coal and Maules Creek Coal Mine.

Section 75.L of the now repealed Part 3A of the EP&A Act says that once a PAC Review has held a public hearing the appeal rights to the Land and Environment Court are extinguished. This has raised the ire of the community for three important reasons;

1. There is a pattern of behaviour emerging whereby all “sensitive” approvals in State Forests are going via a PAC Review in order to skirt the Land and Environment Court.
2. The unwillingness of the minister to require the Planning Assessment Commission to respect his Terms of Reference means that there is no accountability for decisions.
3. Undeclared political donations, former high ranking political figures and well connected lobbyists leave a number of questions on the table regarding the failed Terms of Reference and the newly engineered approvals process.

The Land and Environment court would likely take a dim view of the shoddy environmental offsets, inadequate cumulative impact assessment and political shenanigans overlooked by the PAC and the Dept of Planning.

Now having taken the “merits” appeal rights away, the Department of Planning in the Maules Creek recommendation is trying to wind back the PAC’s “stringent” guidelines. It is obvious to anyone that the process for these two mines has been designed to suit prior to the projects going on exhibition and that poor oversight is exasperating the problem.

This failure to follow due process and the denial of natural justice will always bring about direct action such as that shown yesterday.  Two arrested in mine protest (video), Prime News September 4 2012

Direct Action is being taken for a second straight day against the Boggabri Coal mine which is operating in the Leard State Forest as the community clearly doesn’t accept the planning outcome.

It is time for a full enquiry into the Dept of Planning  processes regarding these mines to be held before more members of the public take risks with their life and liberty to reverse these engineered planning decisions.

Not everyone accepts the “legal issues” argument re the Aquifer Interference Policy and the Strategic Land Use Policy only referring to new PEL’s. Here is a “layman’s” breakdown re the existing PELs.

Looking at the relevant sections of the  Petroleum (onshore Act) it says;

PETROLEUM (ONSHORE) ACT 1991 – SECT 22 Cancellation and suspension of title
(5) No compensation is payable by the Crown for or in respect of the cancellation of, or a suspension of operations under, a petroleum title.

Cancellation or suspension of title is guided by Section 1;

(1) A petroleum title may be cancelled by the Minister if its holder, at any time during the term of the title:

(a) fails to fulfil or contravenes any of the conditions of the title, or

(b) fails to use the land comprised in the title in good faith for the purposes for which it has been granted, or

(c) uses the land for a purpose other than that for which the title has been granted, or

(d) contravenes a provision of this Act or the regulations (whether or not the holder is prosecuted or convicted of an offence arising from the contravention).

Laymans Conclusion

As 50% of the PELs in the state of NSW have expired the PELs simply need to be reissued after the AI and SRLU policies come into force. For the remaining 50% the NSW State Government could ask that the companies voluntarily comply or simply find a reason under S (1) to expire them anyway.

This article ran in the Northern Star re the Northern Rivers Poll on CSG.  http://www.northernstar.com.au/story/2012/08/31/csg-lobby-quits-poll-by-council/

It was accompanied by the following graphic:

This question “A” by APPEA is tacit confirmation by the industry that they have no social licence.   i.e. “Regardless of your personal feelings ….” Basically APPEA are acknowledging that the community does not accept this industry but would like to bully the community across the line with economic arguments.

Is this how the industry is pitching to Barry O’Farrell and the cabinet right now with the SRLUP?

Perhaps the Northern Rivers and the Lismore Council could use a even more meaningful question:

C. “Regardless of the lack of science around the connectivity of the coal seams and the surface aquifers, the documented well failures, the toxic cancer producing chemicals and weak legislation, do you support CSG as a short term  industry controlled by foreign companies?”

The NW Alliance is approaching leading organisations in the region to help sponsor the Gunnedah Basin HIA. The Namoi CMA Board has been given an update on progress and an indication of next steps for the Health Study.

It is the NW Alliances hope that the HIA data can become one of the overlays on the map of the catchment that is being developed by the CMA. Existing overlays include the geographic features, mineral resources, soils and vegetation and recently the Namoi Catchment Water Study.

The Namoi Water Study adds the additional scenarios of minerals and gas extraction in the catchment from the benign Scenario 1 to the doomsday scenario 7. These scenarios could enable the HIA to pinpoint the location of the impacts and help frame the study with other environmental impacts.

When such a map is complete, planning for the catchment can be undertaken that takes into consideration the complexity of the catchment and the likely impacts of specific projects on our home.

Power Points 27.8.2012

Email: barwon@parliament.nsw.gov.au