Paddy Manning - What the Frack?

What the Frack?

Australia has a new $50-billion industry. It carries unprecedented environmental risks but might be the path to energy salvation: cleaner than coal, safer than nuclear, a complement to renewables. Energy companies tell us we could be the biggest liquid natural gas exporter in the world, but greenies and farmers are united in their opposition to coal seam gas extraction on some of our most fertile agricultural lands.

Journalist Paddy Manning unpicks the coal seam gas extraction story, visiting drill sites, boardrooms, boom towns, pipelines, parliamentary offices and angry farmgate protests. It seems that coal seam gas extraction may be one boom thats happening too fast.

PADDY MANNING is a senior business writer with the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, specialising in energy and agriculture. He previously worked for the Australian Financial Review and The Australian and was founder of Ethical Investor magazine in 2000. He was a contributor to Margo Kingstons Not Happy John (2004). Highly Commended for Business Journalism in the 2010 Walkley Awards, he is also a winner of the Citigroup Journalism Awards for Excellence.

Short, sharp essays you can read on any electronic device. QuickEs are for readers interested in whats going on. Written by great writers who know what theyre talking about, QuickEs will ease confusion and boredom.

PADDY MANNING

WHAT THE FRACK?

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT COAL SEAM GAS

A NewSouth QuickEs book

Published by

NewSouth Publishing

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

newsouthpublishing.com

Paddy Manning 2012

First published 2012

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Author: Manning, Paddy.

Title: What the frack? [electronic resource]: everything you need to know about coal seam gas/Paddy Manning.

ISBN: 978 174224 127 2 (eBook: ePub)

978 174224 380 1 (eBook: mobi)

978 174224 615 4 (eBook: ePDF)

Series: NewSouth QuickEs.

Subjects: Coalbed methane Australia.

Coalbed methane Environmental aspects Australia.

Gas extraction Australia.

Hydraulic fracturing.

Dewey Number: 333.823

Design Di Quick

Contents

Acknowledgments

Thanks to all the people Ive interviewed or spoken to while researching this book, some of whom also fed me when I was (too briefly) on the road. Thanks to Drew Hutton for the worlds fastest tour of the Western Downs in 2011. Thanks to Richard Beattie at IIR Conferences for waiving the entry fee for a writer. Thanks to David Sparkes at the Gladstone Observer. Thanks to David Quincy for putting me up and showing me around the Liverpool Plains. Thanks to Lee, Megan, Rebecca and Doug McNicholl for the best puppy ever, Lockit. Thanks to Sam Crafter, Mark Rodgers, Shalene McClure and Alan Feely at Santos for taking me to Kahlua and the Pilliga, and to James Baulderstone and Chandran Vigneswaran for a trip to the Cooper Basin. Thanks to Anneliis Allen, Carl McCamish, Andrew Moser and Christopher Zipf for being straight-up and for an extremely valuable tour of Origins CSG operations. The role of gas in an affordable transition to a zero-emissions energy future is a complex issue and many people of goodwill, concerned about climate change, believe gas has a major role to play. Thanks to analysts Gundi Royle, David Leitch, Mark Greenwood and Adrian Wood, who have helped me better understand the gas industry on many occasions working on this book and in my day job. In no particular order thanks also to my dad, Dan Hall, Rob Millhouse, Rosemary Nankivell, David Spratt, Jacqui Kirkby, Rob Banks, Ross Kendall, Noel Tomnay, Peter Martin, Tony Pickard, Carmel Flint and Mick Keogh. Thanks to my editors at the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age Sean Aylmer, Peter Kerr, Mark Hawthorne and Eric Johnston for support during the writing. Thanks to Ben Cubby, Kevin Morrison, John Hillier, Oona Nielssen and Geoff Edwards for reading all or part of the manuscript and for giving honest and helpful feedback. Thanks to Phillipa McGuinness and Heather Cam at NewSouth Publishing for bearing with me, and to editor Fiona Sim for doing that last bit. Lastly thanks to my wife Melinda for not really hating me and thanks Nick for spending so much time with my beautiful boys, Jude and Milo. This book is dedicated to Australias farmers.

Acronyms

For more information see http://csg.getup.org.au/ and http://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/coal-seam-gas-by-the-numbers/

CHAPTER 1

A golden age of gas?

Chinchilla magistrate Matthew McLaughlin was clearly sympathetic. In a tight little courtroom on Queenslands Darling Downs, with camera crews waiting outside, he told the three defendants he was well aware of the debate about coal seam gas and had his own personal views about it.

Ive done some reading recently in a National Geographic, if I remember, that raised great concerns with me personally about whats happening. It was talking about whats already happened in the United States My own personal opinion though is irrelevant, of course. Im simply here to enforce the rules that the government makes So, if you want to make a speech to me about the unfairness of it all, you can but I cant do anything about it Youre probably preaching to the converted.