GAS company Santos has taken the first steps towards expanding its controversial Narrabri Gas Project into the high-value agriculture region of the Liverpool Plains.
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The company quietly announced plans this week to conduct seismic surveys "south-west" of Gunnedah, for the first time in a decade.
The Leader understands the company plans to conduct exploration activities in both of the two petroleum exploration licences (PEL) covering sections of the Liverpool Plains, which were among four reapproved by the state government earlier this year.
Mullaley cattle farmer, Margaret Fleck, owns property covered by one of them, PEL 12.
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She said any effort to expand gas operations in the region "is a farmer's worst nightmare".
"We've seen how coal seam gas has expanded rapidly in southern and inland Queensland, causing land to subside and water bores to run dry," she said.
"Santos and the Perrottet government appear hell-bent on inflicting the same devastation on the precious farming country of the Liverpool Plains and north west, and the communities who call these places home."
It's been about a decade since the company last conducted exploration activities in the area, she said.
The NSW Independent Planning Commission approved Santos' plans to spend $3.6 billion constructing as many as 850 coal seam gas wells in the Pilliga forest, west of Narrabri, in 2020.
Landholders warned the commission during a week of public hearings that, if it approved the project, the company would seek to rapidly expand gas exploitation region-wide.
Lock the Gate NSW coordinator Nic Clyde said the Santos announcement was exactly those fears coming true.
The company has always had an ambition to expand beyond the Narrabri scheme, he said.
"Broadly speaking, no one believed that Santos' ambition was a boutique project in the Pilliga forest," he said.
"The scale of those petroleum exploration licenses right across that area in the north west flagged to everyone that the industry had aspirations to dramatically expand, and make a monster by drilling holes right throughout the north west for coal seam gas."
Mr Clyde said the Liverpool Plains had some of the best agricultural land in the country and local farmers oppose what they consider to be a threat to groundwater access and quality.
For decades, Liverpool Plains farmers have fanatically opposed mining project after mining project in the region, forcing company after company to abandon plans to mine coal in the area.
Chinese mining firm Shenhua was the last to give up, last year abandoning its plans to build the Watermark coal mine south-east of Gunnedah.
"Santos announcing some seismic drilling is one thing, but getting social license to actually build any gas project is something that is completely different," Mr Clyde said.
"They face a world of pain in getting this gas field up. There's no pipeline. The Gomeroi nation is implacably opposed to their traditional lands being drilled for gas. Super funds are increasingly becoming uncomfortable with their funds being used to develop new gas resources. There is an enormous amount of opposition.
"The longer this drags on the less the farming communities in NSW, the Australian community, the global community will accept companies like Santos looking for new sources of gas and particularly doing so in a way that will compromise our best agricultural land."
Ms Fleck vowed that any effort to develop the Liverpool Plains for gas "will be met with fierce resistance from landholders".
"Santos will never build gasfields on the Liverpool Plains," she said.
Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher has told media in recent weeks the company is working to expedite the Narrabri scheme, which is currently scheduled to come online in 2025, amid a national and international gas shortage.
The company has yet to make a final investment decision on the project.
In recent months, the state government gazetted four long-expired so-called "zombie" PELs, once again permitting gas exploration works in a large area across the region. Many others were killed for good, and the area covered by the resurrected PELs was shrunk.
In an ad placed in local media this week, Santos announced they plan to conduct exploration activities including a seismic survey "later this year", on public roads and road reserves.
The ad claims seismic surveying is a "low impact, non-intrusive" technique to investigate the subsurface geology of an area. The process has been used since the 1940s and is safe, it claims.
The company will conduct a public meeting about the exploration activities at the Mackeller Hotel, Gunnedah on Thursday June 23.
The Leader understands Santos started undertaking exploratory works in the area in 2007 and last conducted them there in 2011. Santos was contacted for comment on this story.
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Andrew Messenger
Politics, environment and energy journalist at the Northern Daily Leader. I also write about health, bushfires and occasionally music. I'm a Brisbane boy by way of Charleville and Hobart who now lives in in beautiful New England. Get me at andrew.messenger@austcommunitymedia.com.au
Politics, environment and energy journalist at the Northern Daily Leader. I also write about health, bushfires and occasionally music. I'm a Brisbane boy by way of Charleville and Hobart who now lives in in beautiful New England. Get me at andrew.messenger@austcommunitymedia.com.au
