Coal seam gas industry has grown too fast
The federal Minister for Energy, Martin Ferguson, said this – the coal seam gas industry has grown too fast.
The issues about this for this $50 billion-plus export industry are:
Impact on groundwater and land-use impact,
what to do with the millions of tonnes of salt left over
the impact on Gladstone harbour and the Great Barrier Reef.
There was an assumption that coal seam gas reserves was a cleaner alternative to coal that would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change.
However peer-reviewed articles by Cornell University’s Robert Howarth and the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research’s Tom Wigley, both published in Climate Change Letters, have found unconventional that coal seam or shale gas may deliver no greenhouse benefit at all…
And even make things worse.
Interestingly when the oil and gas industry lobby group, the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA), commissioned research by engineering consultancy Worley Parsons on the life cycle emissions of coal seam gas versus coal when exported and burned in China, they only released the executive summary.
Why? Because, apparently it showed that coal seam gas might emit more greenhouse gasses than coal.
And if burned in the least efficient ”peaking” open-cycle turbines, coal seam gas was up to 44 per cent dirtier than the newest, most efficient coal-fired plant.
On Tuesday the Merrill Lynch oil and gas analyst David Heard weighed in with a six-page note to clients titled: ”Green gas debate: who is hiding the fugitives?” It pulls the APPEA report apart.
APPEA’s report admits, on page eight, ”the large-scale CSG/LNG industry in Queensland is new and emissions are only projections subject to high uncertainties in some areas”.
If the greenhouse benefit claims turn out to be false, it’s bad news for the coal seam gas companies. This hardly seems to be a sustainable business passing on benefits to our community. What about the sensible identification and management of risk in the industry systems?
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