What more convincing evidence could there be that Queensland is CSG Coal Seam Gas mining the Darling Downs food bowl the Great Artesian Basin and the Condamine to Murray Rivers systems

What more convincing evidence could there be that Queensland is facing a serious crisis than what is starting to be done to our prime quality food-growing farmlands on the Darling Downs and also risking the Great Artesian Basin aquifer?

Coal Seam Gas (CSG) is touted to us as “Clean Energy” energy with a clean green image and we are invited to choose it as our contribution to the environment on our power bill.

But “Clean Energy” has some very dirty secrets.

CSG has been extracted from the Surat Basin for decades out in mainly grazing areas and no-one paid much attention. The mining processes co-existed and no-one worried about them.

Then world energy demand and oil prices exploded oil supplies started to peak globally China boomed industrially and extracting hydrocarbons became a boom industry.

The number of exploration mines in the Surat Basin grew rapidly and big contracts started to be written with China. All else being equal it looks like a good opportunity for Queensland.

All else isn’t equal.

Firstly where there is potential for super profits foreign ownership moves in in this case Royal Dutch Shell and Petro China as Arrow Energy.

Then they took out exploration leases over all the prime food bowl farming areas in the Darling Downs and now they are putting gas wells exploration wells and vast evaporation ponds (water containment structures) on soil and aquifers that any sane person would have to regard as Australia’s most precious agricultural resource.

The CSG extraction process comes with profoundly serious problems identified in the Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) without any identified workable solutions yet the EIS is now approved by the State’s Coordinator General.

The most serious problems are:

  • The risk of loss of Queensland’s primary source of food supply

  • The risk of severely damaging or very likely destroying the soils completely

  • The risk of dramatically drawing down the aquifer

  • The risk of polluting the aquifer with salt (sodium chloride and sodium bicarbonate) and with neurotoxic surfactants

  • The risk of polluting rivers such as the Condamine eventually flowing into the Murray

  • The risk of severe health effects on locals based on US experience

  • Social effects on the communities as towns disintegrate & people leave.

  • High greenhouse gas emissions and energy use.

The farms of the Darling Downs grow the grain that feeds most of the beef pigs and chicken (including for eggs and dairy products) that we buy in supermarkets. “If you eat pork or beef or eggs you can almost guarantee it’s been fed on grain from the Darling Downs.”

Without this as our prime food source food would have to be obtained from elsewhere. There is no-where else in Australia that could replace the Darling Downs. It is dubious if there is anywhere in the world that could replace the Darling Downs but we would probably be looking at importing our food probably from China while our CSG goes to China along with super profits from extracting it. The pathway for funds to pay for importing food is much less clear. While the State Government gets some royalties from gas exports it also pays to provide infrastructure. The State Government wouldn’t be paying to import food to replace what could no longer be produced on the Darling Downs. How much would Australia have to earn after costs to pay to replace the food produced on the Darling Downs? The money we pay to farmers there cycles back into the Australian economy. Money paid for food to overseas growers does not come back into Australia unless we export something like coal and gas.

Farms on the Darling Downs are mostly owned by Australian farming families and have been managed with extraordinary care. While the soils are hugely productive and can produce sustainably into the indefinite future they are very vulnerable in several aspects:

  • They are high in clay so will be completely destroyed if salt gets onto them as it works on the clay to turn it very alkaline and kill the living organisms in the soil

  • They are easily damaged by driving over them in a vehicle. The farmers use high-tech farming methods that use GPS satellite positioning to ensure that specially designed tractors keep within 2 centimetres to exactly the same track every time they ever have to go into the field. All the rows are precision planted and managed by top agricultural methods

These soils are a very rare commodity in the whole world. They were formed by erosion of volcanos in alluvial floodplain region of the Condamine River to produce a treeless flat plain of very deep rich fertile black clay soil. To see it and to pick up a handful is to marvel. It is world best soil type being managed with world best farming practice. It is a treeless flood plain highly developed. Every single structure on the flood plain has required approval to erect with “27 hoops backwards to jump through and engineering and water flow studies required to demonstrate it won’t impact the soil”.

None of this is required of the CSG wells and structures. A CSG well is not very spectacular to look at not even very large but installing it inevitably involves a lot of heavy vehicles driving all over the area getting to it. The sites staked out for these wells are literally dotted all over the field. What is now a flat perfectly managed field will end up with pipelines tyre ruts and the actual well.

The process of managing the crop works on these huge dead flat perfectly even rows of crops. Irrigation equipment is used that goes right across huge areas of the crop. The irrigation equipment costs almost as much as the land to purchase and that is saying a lot because the land takes a lifetime for most farmers to pay for. There are no answers to the question of how an irrigator could ‘get around’ a CSG well in the middle of a crop. Nor is there an answer to the years it would take for the soil to recover from the compaction involved in the well construction process. Nor how you sow a crop that has to keep going around wells all the time.

The process of extracting CSG is carried out using horizontal drilling and hydrological fracturing technology. Once fractured water is pumped out then surfactant chemical are put in. The gas then flows out and is collected and piped to regional compression plants or piped to gas-fired power stations.

The process of extracting water from the coal seam produces vast quantities of very saline poor quality water that then has to be managed. The method used is to construct very large ponds now to be lined with plastic to hold the water while it evaporates. Some of it is pumped elsewhere for use in other mining processes (coal mining). Like swimming pool plastic liners that need replacing every ten years this is not a long-term solution. The ponds take up very big areas of farm land and presumably their construction would also come with extensive soil damage.

The region is a true flood plain between the North and South branches of the Condamine River. When it floods it does a thorough job of it and the EIS recognised that it would be impossible to guarantee that salty water wouldn’t escape into the surrounding farm soils in such events. In this case the chemistry of the soils would guarantee their complete destruction.

Estimates of the quantities of salty water and salt to be produced from the CSG extraction in the area are:

  • 250000000000 litres/year being allowed by the Government (compared with a total water reserve (not annual) of 10000000000 for the whole of the Great Artesian Basin licences)

  • 6 pilot wells to run for 2 years will pump 730000000litres of water containing 5100 tonnes of salt

  • In the life of the Surat Basin production of 50000000tonnes of salt will potentially be produced being 220 semi-trailer loads every day for 20 years.

There simply are not “solutions” to this immense salt problem.

Water is a precious commodity. For a long time the Great Artesian Basin aquifer seemed like a limitless resource. It supplies high quality potable drinking water. The Condamine alluvial aquifer is very productive intensively developed and is the largest allocated aquifer in Queensland. The aquifer was over-allocated and it was drawing down (water levels falling). Combined with drought farmers and the State Government recognised the problem had to be addressed and the end result was a 60% reduction in farmers’ water entitlement allocations. Farmers accepted this and have adapted their farming methods successfully to work within the constraints.

CSG mining companies are not required to observe any limits on water extraction. The Queensland Government has now granted them the right to extract unlimited amounts of water to lower the amounts of water in the coal seams. Mining companies are exempt from the Water Act.

The structure of the underground aquifers and the coal seam 600metres down is there is an aquifer above the coal seam and another below. The process of drilling through the aquifer into the coal seam and fracturing the coal seam and pumping out water will create the equivalent of an area of greatly reduced pressure in the coal seam.

The EIS for Santos GLNG Project that was passed a month ago says in Section 3.2 (of its 13500 pages) “In all fields there is potential for water to move directly from aquifers above and below into the coal seam. Leakage from the Hutton aquifer below the coal seam will continue for hundreds of years afterwards.” No solutions to this stark environmental problem were identified yet the EIS was passed by the Queensland Government.

There is a lot of information available to suggest this aquifer is interconnected to the Great Artesian Basin / Walloon Coal Measures that serves two-thirds of Queensland for water and irrigation.

The Great Artesian Basin is being proposed for possible National Heritage and World Heritage Nomination. It is one of the hydrological wonders of the world. It is certainly one of the most important water resources in Australia and by far the most important of our underground water resources. It is possibly the largest such underground water system in the world. It is the only source of reliable water for human activity and water-dependent ecosystems in much of the arid and semi-arid landscape in Queensland New South Wales South Australia and the Northern Territory (Drew Hutton: Scoping Study for a possible National Heritage and World Heritage Nomination of the Great Artesian Basin)

This immensely valuable resource is at risk of degradation from CSG mining.

The surfactants that are injected as part of the coal seam fracturing process are a neurotoxic carcinogen brew. These are likely to end up degrading the aquifers and rivers.

Experience in the US has shown that the fracturing process commonly results in industrial accidents and spills contaminating ground and surface water. Bubbles of methane gas started emerging from the ground all over the place after underground fracturing. The carcinogen benzene was 48 times above standards.

A common pattern of health impacts across US CSG mining regions has clearly emerged:

  • Adrenal-gland tumours

  • Blood disorders

  • Idiopathic haemorrhaging

  • Kidney damage

  • Cardiovascular effects

  • Neurological effects

Settlements out-of-court have focused on stipulating that claimants stop telling their story. There is no question about people getting sick from emissions from the wells. If you live in a low-lying area near a gas well you can be breathing settled gases most of the day. People walk away from properties.

The US Congress has exempted hydrologic fracturing effects on drinking water from being reported. This is a Congress where gas mining dollars speak big.

Those who do the gas extraction know the risks. The industry has gotten way ahead of the regulators and is conducting an uncontrolled experiment. They simply do not know what the impacts are going to be on the Great Artesian Basin aquifers for example.

Although CSG is cleaner than coal once it gets to the power station on the way it is not a clean process.

Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas 23 times more destructive to the earth’s climate than CO2 but quite a lot escapes at various points in the extraction process. Apart from leaks associated with fracturing there is methane gas being vented to the atmosphere or burnt all over the Surat Basin. The vented methane is expected to produce 10% of the 2020 greenhouse gas emissions target for Australia and 20% of the 2050 greenhouse gas emissions target.

After the gas is extracted it is chilled to –170degrees Centigrade at Gladstone turning a basketball-sized volume of the gas into a ping-pong ball size. This is then LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas). It takes a lot of energy to do the chilling. This is then transported to overseas markets then it has to be re-expanded and once again this takes a lot of energy to do. Only then it is ready to use.

The CSG mining industry is a short-term industry with an expected life of 30 years. The farming industry it is now threatening to destroy has an indefinitely sustainable life through future generations.

The CSG mining in the Darling Downs farmlands is Queensland and Australia’s “Gulf of Mexico oil spill”. This is the sort of crazy planning decision that only happens when governments have their backs absolutely to the wall and companies are blind with greed.

Our Government appears desperate for the royalties anticipated from the CSG mining (and open cut coal mining digging up whole townships such as Acland.). It appears so desperate it is insanely prepared to throw away the Darling Downs farmlands and the Great Artesian Basin.

What is happening in the Darling Downs is a symptom of the waves of overpopulation flooding Queensland with the enormous demands for infrastructure that creates. How can our Government keep up with it without a desperate need for funds so it is hooked on mining royalties.

What is happening in the Darling Downs and the Gulf of Mexico and the oil spill off the Kimberley coast is also a symptom of Peak Oil. Even governments hooked on revenue don’t make decisions as extremely insane as destroying your best farmland and aquifers or drilling four miles under the ocean well beyond technological capability unless you are faced by a world totally hooked on an oil supply that has already peaked.

How are we going to eat in future?