'Coal Seam Gas' - SBS INSIGHT, This Tuesday night 20th September 7:30pm Featuring Ruth Armstrong & Graham Clapham
What happens when the coal seam gas industry comes to town? We got a spread of views from a Queensland community - on the streets and on the farms...
As more exploration and drilling licenses are granted, coal seam gas mining is generating jobs, headlines, protests, town hall meetings and advertising campaigns. Insight focuses on the Queensland region of Chinchilla-Dalby, where the CSG industry has operated for many years, to look at the impacts – environmental, social and financial.
Real estate agents, hotels, butchers, hairdressers and residents have different views on whether the boom is good for their town. Farmers are also divided - some are worried that the mining process will contaminate their land and use too much precious water, while others report no problems and say they’re doing well out of the gas rush.
Meanwhile, industry representatives say coal seam gas mining is safe. But some farmers and residents want more evidence, and are pushing for greater regulation and monitoring.
Cotton farmers Graham Clapham and Ruth Armstrong, of Norwin, near Toowoomba yesterday, fear coal-seam gas wells are draining their water supply.
Source: The Australian
Imagine you are running a successful farming operation; then one day a man from the gas company arrives with news that a coal seam gas field lies beneath your feet. From there 3 wells are sunk, then another 18. And then a proposal for another 30, turning your property into a thriving gas field, while threatening the viability of the working farm.
Down the road, the neighbour sells after 48 wells are sunk into his property. The compensation of $250 a year, per well was not much inducement to stay. The wells themselves are estimated to be making the companies a million dollars a year, each.
And then the gas company says they might have to move your house to sink another well into the land.
This is the experience of just one of the farmers featured on Four Corners this week.
Right across Australia gas companies are drilling down through the earth to extract the resource that the industry says will be one of the answers to our future energy needs. Already some $31 billion worth of gas projects have been approved by the Federal Government, which are expected to generate thousands of jobs and billions in revenues.
But this precious resource lies beneath homes and farms, and the food bowls of Australia.
And this is where the gas companies are drilling; prompting a heated conflict over who should pay the price for our energy supplies. Read more at: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2011/s3141787.htm
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