With climate change in our midst, it seems pretty important to be thinking about energy sources. After reading about all of the potential energy sources for Australia, I was interested in looking at a current source that has recently been making headlines. Coal seam gas is probably not on most people’s radar but it’s been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons. So what is it?
Coal seam gas is just natural gas (methane) that is produced during coal formation. Coal is formed from decayed vegetation over millions of years and is typically found in beds between layers of sedimentary rock (e.g. shale and sandstone). These formations are called coal seams. Methane and water (along with a few other things) are produced during the conversion from peat to coal and they ‘cleat’ to the pores between the coal grains. The gas is extracted as an energy source because the coal is so far down in the earth that it is, as yet, uneconomic to mine it.
In Australia, commercial production of coal seam gas began in 1996 in the Bowen Basin, Queensland. To set up a coal seam for commercial production, the coal seams must first be ‘fracked’. This is the hydraulic fracturing of the rock which allows the gas to flow freely through the seam. Fracking involves the combination of high pressure water and sand with chemical additives to form a gel (the combination is varied depending on the specific well, e.g. if the area has a high clay content then potassium chloride is used). After this process has occurred, extraction can commence using high pressure water. The gas is then collected and sent to be processed. The ultimate uses of coal seam gas are varied, but currently it makes up 30% of gas used to produce electricity in Queensland.
It’s in Queensland that much of the coal seam controversy has erupted. A major environmental concern is that many of the chemical additives used are bleaches and other chemicals which do not readily bio-degrade (like naphthalene). Additionally, some of these chemicals are carcinogenic and toxic to humans. Last October, Queensland changed its laws to prevent the use of chemicals known as BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylene and xylene) from being used by coal seam gas producers, either in fracking or extraction. However, this week it was reported that traces of benzene, toluene and xylene had been found at a bore owned by mining company CSG in Queensland’s Darling Downs. The concentration was found to be 15-16 parts per billion. This may not seem like much, but it is more than the amount of benzene people are exposed to in rush hour in Los Angeles and more than 5 times what the same study recorded at a fixed outdoor site. There is still an investigation as to whether the chemicals detected in Queensland have come from natural or anthropogenic sources, but it has certainly shone the spotlight on the coal seam gas industry.
Clive Palmer, a billionaire and mining tycoon, has added to the debate by suggesting that Australia is lagging behind in training and expertise in the coal seam gas industry. At the National Party’s Federal Council in Canberra he predicted that the “coal seam gas technology currently used in Australia is lethal and will kill Australians, poison our water table and destroy the land.”
They are pretty big claims to make, but from the information I have looked at it looks like that although the fracking process works well, it could be done with more environmentally friendly (and human friendly) chemicals. Maybe it’s time for bit of Aussie ingenuity; coming up with some alternatives and proving Mr Palmer wrong!
No wonder New World Order conspiracy theorists are growing by the day, if they are right then this type of human behaviour will certainly desecrate the planet much more than it is already , and wipe out most of it’s human population. Should we develop further cleaner and greener energy resources in an attempt to reverse the damage to our planet, most definitely !!!
Nice piece, Claire, and the basics are well-researched. However, there is a lot of back-story you could add. For example:
1) The main point worth investigating is the difference between CSG mining and frakking, if any. I’ve not yet seen a side-by-side comparison of the two processes.
2) The controversy in the US and the UK; it’s a much, much larger picture than just Australia
3) The political landscape – government and public service aspects
4) NGOs in the mix: Lock the Gate Alliance is only one; here’s another with a relevant article.
http://dea.org.au/news/article/review_of_the_health_impacts_of_coal_seam_gas
Hope this all helps. Aiming to save the world is a big one. Start with your own back yard and with scholarship. The truth will make the difference and the internet needs minds to filter the true from the false. That’s the responsibility of every educated person. One day, people will review any page on the internet for validity, and their votes will count in Google searches…and their voting history will also count (ie, right-wing people positively reviewing right wing web pages will be worth less than someone from the left giving the page a thumbs-up). For now, though, we have to do it the hard way… Good luck!
Valid points Peter, the voices of land owners are often lost in this political debate. The economics of mining these types of resources takes centre stage given the current energy demand and this sometimes leaves many of the environmental concerns to be sorted out later. I certainly hope that as people become more environmentally aware the standards under which the mining companies operate will be raised so that instances of environmental contamination become obselete!
Look at all that gas – and where do they drill, under prime agricultural land and close to water resources and sensitive land like the Pilliga Forest – and in urban and semi-urban areas. It’s not all about fracking Claire. These scum and the Governments they have bought are too lazy to do this properly. The cheap way out affects people, their livlihoods, their land values, their health and wellbeing. A little demorcacy would be nice. LOCK THE GATE!