Fracking

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The owners of a Northern Territory cattle station are suing Origin Energy in a bid to stop them expanding its fracking operation.
Origin began fracking the Amungee well in the Beetaloo Basin in 2016.
The owners of the Amungee Mungee cattle station are seeking an injunction to stop Origin from further gas exploration.
The owners are billionaire businessman Brett Blundy and Katherine poly pipe manufacturers Emma and Adrian Brown.
They accuse Origin of failing to provide information about the environmental risks associated with fracking.
The Pepper inquiry found current land access guidelines in the NT were not binding and called for signed agreements between pastoralists and gas explorers to be mandatory, The NT News recently reported.
“It is the panel’s strong view that, prior to any access to a pastoral lease, a signed land access agreement (statutory land access agreement) must exist between the pastoral lessee and the gas company and, moreover, that the obligation to finalise such an agreement must be statutorily mandated,” the report reads.
An Origin spokesman said the company had “been talking to this pastoralist for almost 12 months for this year’s activity.”
“Origin previously reached agreement to access the same property, for similar activities, and had no issues either in reaching an agreement or in the execution of our work,” he said.
“Our desire is always to work constructively to finalise an agreement about access to the property.”
 
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Brett Blundy seeks to stop Origin Energy frack in Top End

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GUEST OBSERVATION
The question of opening the Northern Territory and South Australia to fracking has re-ignited concerns about environmental and health impacts.
Receiving less attention are the social and economic changes affecting nearby rural communities from this natural gas development and the social stress that can result.
From 2012, I led a team analysing trends in key social and economic indicators over the past 15 years in Queensland’s largely agricultural Darling Downs, where over A$20 billion has been invested in coal seam gas (CSG) development since 2011. We also interviewed and talked with over 200 residents and business owners. Social stress emerged as the most visible health impact of this coal seam gas development.
Social consequences
Staff in both government and the gas industry agree that stress is an important impact. Our findings are reinforced by studies in the Darling Downs by numerous researchers and research students as well as extensive work in North America on resource boomtowns.
One resident said that the region had been “hit by three significant events – extended drought, local government amalgamation, and coal seam gas development”.
Residents in community meetings expressed concern about potential effects of coal seam gas development on the amount and quality of groundwater and about possible health impacts.
Their concerns were compounded by low levels of trust in the oil and gas industry and a mix of distrust and trust in the government regulator’s ability to manage the industry. This lack of confidence can contribute to psycho-social stress.
Population
The coal seam gas construction phase in the Darling Downs brought migration and an increased pace of work. That made informal emotional support harder to find as “social capital” had declined.
We were told of older, stalwart residents selling their homes at the premium prices brought by the development boom. Grandparents who had provided temporary childcare left as more women entered the workforce. At the same time, the number of childcare staff fell when the Commonwealth government boosted the required qualifications.
Population turnover increased, according to ABS statistics, from 10-15% per year before the CSG boom to 15-20% per year during the boom. The number of nonresident workers peaked in 2014 at over 9,000 for the Western Downs local government area, which has 30,000 residents.
Arguments about whether the CSG development was good or bad for the community exacerbated a decline in the number and strength of bonds among residents. Interviews suggest that these arguments – both in the gasfield towns and within Aboriginal groups along the gas pipeline route – split neighbours and families.
Business
Business and employment opportunities with the resource industry reduced financial stress for some but increased it for others. Tax statistics show that net business income in Chinchilla outside the agricultural sector grew from A$5.8 million in 2011-2012 to A$29 million in 2012-2013. Wage and salary earnings for the town’s 7,000-plus residents rose from A$132 million in 2010-2011 to A$213 million in 2012-2013.
Many business owners faced longer opening hours, a need to pay higher wages, greater turnover among staff and uncertainties about whether to invest in more capacity.
Resource sector incomes were seen to be significantly higher than those in agriculture, education, police, health and social services. There is a two-speed economy here, residents noted. Studies in organisations suggest that this sort of sense of unfairness contributes to psycho-social stress.
Housing costs
The construction phase for coal seam gas development resulted in a surge in housing costs. Rents rose dramatically in Chinchilla, where 20-30% of residents live in rental housing. Median rent on a three-bedroom house went from A$280 per week in 2011 to A$400 per week in 2013. That is despite most industry staff and tier-one contractors living in camps outside the town. Lower-income families moved away.
The rate of construction of new housing climbed. Chinchilla had 106 residential building approvals in 2011. That more than doubled to 252 in 2014, just as the CSG construction phase ended.
Overbuilding caused rents to plummet. Median rent on a three-bedroom house fell below where the historic trend said it should be, to A$200 per week in 2016. Low rents attracted families on government support. Their numbers increased 65% in a two-year period, according to Centrelink statistics.
Drug arrests
Drug arrests had bottomed out at 4.3 per thousand population in 2012 during the coal seam gas construction boom. By 2016, this figure climbed to 35 arrests per 1,000, well above the Queensland trend. The number of police on the street heightened concern among Chinchilla’s residents, interviews revealed.
So, one can see a distribution of economic benefits but also a distribution of social stresses accompanying development of this resource infrastructure. Psycho-social stress can accumulate when changes cause a drop in “social capital”, reducing informal support, and when there is less access to, or use of, mental health services. Prolonged stress can contribute to cardiovascular disease and decreased immune function.
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95216/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1">Further investigation can identify how best to provide the needed duty of care for rural communities near such resource development.
Will Rifkin, Chair in Applied Regional Economics and Director, Hunter Research Foundation Centre, University of Newcastle
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/fracking-can-cause-social-stress-in-nearby-areas-new-research-95216" target="_blank">original article</a>.
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New research says fracking can cause social stress in nearby areas: Will Rifkin

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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/64600/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1">
GUEST OBSERVER
The Victorian government has announced it will permanently ban unconventional gas, often produced through the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”.
Legislation to implement the ban will be introduced this year.
This ban follows a 2015 report on unconventional gas. Following extensive review, committee members were split over whether to implement a full ban or extend the moratorium on onshore gas development by five years.
The ban announced by the government won’t apply to offshore gas. The government will also legislate to extend a moratorium on onshore conventional gas until 2020. Any future decision to approve onshore conventional gas exploration and production will be subject to review by an expert panel.
So will the ban make a difference?
Where did the ban come from?
The moratorium has been in place since 2012. It applies to all types of onshore gas (tight, shale, coal seam and conventional gas) and to any approval for fracking, exploration drilling activities and the use of chemicals us in fracking.
Last year the Victorian government examined the ban and consulted farmers and other landholders, environment and community groups, the gas industry, gas market analysts, hydrogeologists, manufacturers, tourism operators, local governments and the general public.
The final report was the product of more than 1,600 submissions over a six-month period, as well as the findings of the Victorian Auditor-General Report on Unconventional Gas.
The rationale for the ban comes from two core factors. The first is the significant degree of community concern about the social and environmental impacts of onshore unconventional gas, particularly those associated with hydraulic fracturing.
Secondly, the future economic benefits connected with unconventional gas development did not appear, from the findings of the reports, to outweigh those risks. Indeed, the final report found that it was unlikely that strong unconventional gas reserves were present in large commercial and extractable qualities in Victoria’s brown coal fields.
On the other hand, any development would be highly likely to have a dramatic effect on the region’s agriculture and tourism sectors.
Can fracking be permanently banned?
The existing regulatory framework does not recognise any ban on onshore unconventional gas. Indeed, the provisions in the Mineral Resources Sustainable Development Act explicitly include exploration and mining licences for coal seam gas projects.
However, these regulatory frameworks are being completely overhauled. It is clear that the new provisions will introduce a permanent prohibition on unconventional exploration and development in Victoria. The scope and nature of the ban will depend upon the wording of these provisions.
Any law that is introduced cannot be overridden at the national level because the ownership and management of all onshore minerals and hydrocarbons, including gas, are vested in the state.
Pros and cons
The ban will end the strong environmental concerns that continue to exist around unconventional gas production. It will also alleviate some of the emerging conflicts over land allocation and water usage that have emerged between regional food, tourism and energy sectors.
The ban will also ease climate concerns connected with the generation of energy from fossil fuels. In Australia, fugitive emissions from coal mining, oil and gas production account for approximately 8% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Gas extraction, whether conventional or unconventional, can result in significant methane seepage. To date, very few baseline studies are available to compare seepage from drilling and fracking with natural methane seepage.
The ban is likely, however, to have a negative impact on supply, which may affect domestic gas pricing. This is particularly the case if the moratorium on onshore conventional gas production continues and no policy is implemented requiring gas producers to reserve a percentage of produced gas for domestic usage.
The 2015 Gas Market Report, released in March this year, showed that the nexus between international gas prices and east coast LNG production for export, domestic demand and domestic gas prices has become increasingly complex.
Theoretically, eastern Australia has enough reserves to supply the domestic and export markets for the next 20 years. But if the market is divided into the north (Queensland and Cooper Basin) and the south (Victoria and New South Wales) there is unlikely to be enough reserves in the south to meet forecast demand, particularly following the ban.
This will inevitably require the development of more gas reserves in other areas of the south, or imports from the north. If international gas prices and demand support more east coast LNG production, things will get worse as this supply will not be available in the north.
Victoria will, however, continue to utilise gas exploration and production in offshore gas wells in Bass Strait. There are 23 offshore platforms in the strait and ExxonMobil has held these titles for many years.
The offshore gas wells have traditionally supplied most of Victoria’s domestic gas market. Consequently, if the ban did apply to offshore gas exploration and production, it would have a profound effect on domestic gas supply.
Such a ban is, however, unlikely. First, it could not apply to offshore wells located beyond the territorial sea because these come under Commonwealth jurisdiction.
Second, a ban could not be applied retrospectively. Hence it would not affect established offshore title holders who have been supplying the domestic gas market for many years.
Samantha Hepburn is director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University and author for The Conversation. She can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/samantha-hepburn-5327" target="_blank">here.</a>
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