CSG and Kaputar NP?

 

In light of the arrogant “scout” challenged on Black Mountain Creek Road last Friday looking into roadside paddocks with satellite maps and GPS equipment, these guys could be coming to a farm near you.

We all need to think about our response to Dart should they decide to progress this PEL. The MCCC  have written to the Mining Minister Chris Harcher to abandon this PEL in the Kaputar NP and have had no response. The recent forum in Armidale that canvassed the idea of piping gas across the New England from the North West  should be ringing alarm bells in our ears.

Coals seam gas on fire on Darling Downs

 

The methane burning on a property near Arrow Energy’s Daandine gas field near Dalby, Queensland is undoubtedly the result of coal seam gas operations in the area.

 

Methane is emerging through a large crack in the ground at Daandine and has set fire to a nearby paddock.

 

Lock the Gate Alliance president, Drew Hutton, said attempts by Arrow to lay the blame for the methane leak and fire mat the door of the nearby, 30 year-old Wilkie Creek coal mine were “pathetic” and defied common sense.

 

The coal seam gas industry can always come up with reasons why they are not to blame for these incidents but none of this was happening before the companies began de-watering and de-pressurising the coal seams on the Western Darling Downs,”Mr Hutton said.

 

Ïn the last few weeks we have seen the Condamine River bubbling like a spa bath along a 15 kilometre stretch of the river with a coal seam gas field nearby.

 

“Then, we have people on the Tara residential estate, in the middle of a gas field, complaining of chronic headaches, nose bleeds, ear bleeds and skin rashes while, at the same time, smelling ‘rotten egg gas’.

 

“Methane and other gases will be liberated from the coal seam aquifer when that aquifer is de-watered as it has been at Tara-Chinchila and at Daandine. It will then find whatever pathways it can. if some of these pathways are cracks and fissures in the ground, it will find its way to the surface and this is undoubtedly what is happening.”

 

“I have seen similar incidents in my recent visits to the United States and there, local communities were permanently evacuated because methane was coming up through cracks in the ground.”

 

Mr Hutton called on communities everywhere which are threatened by coal seam gas development to look closely at what is happening on the Western Downs and think carefully about whether or njot they want this industry in their areas.

 

Mr Hutton is in Fullerton Cove, near Newcastle, today (Monday) where a blockade is being started against Dart Energy which wants to bring an exploration drill rig into the community.