Pages - Statement Details
Tuesday, 4 February 2014
• Three
delegates appointed to assess the proposed Browse Liquefied Natural Gas
precinct
• Delegates
had no involvement in the previous Browse assessment
Environment Minister Albert Jacob has announced the appointment
of three delegates to assess the proposed Browse Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)
precinct.
Mr Jacob said he approved the Environmental Protection Authority
(EPA) formally delegating its powers to assess the proposal under the
Environmental Protection Act 1986.
The appointments follow an August 2013 Supreme Court finding
that invalidated the EPA’s original assessment report and recommendations.
“The three appointed delegates are Gerard Early PSM, Dr Tom
Hatton and newly appointed EPA member Glen McLeod,” the Minister said.
“These three delegates had no involvement in the previous Browse
assessment and recommendations to Government. I am confident the delegates will
provide a well-considered and impartial report on the proposal.”
Canberra-based Mr Early was deputy secretary of the Commonwealth
Department of Environment, before he retired to run his own consultancy in
2010.
Dr Hatton is group executive of energy at the CSIRO. He has more
than 25 years of national and international research experience and chairs the
Marine Parks and Reserves Authority.
Mr McLeod is a well-respected lawyer with 36 years of national
and international experience in environmental, planning and government law; the
climate change and renewable energy sectors; ports, probity and procurement. He
is a member of the Waste Authority and the Botanic Gardens and Parks Authority
and was appointed to the EPA in October 2013.
Fact File
• The EPA has
delegated its powers and duties to the three panel members for the assessment
of the proposed Browse LNG Precinct and any subsequent derived proposal under
section 19(1) of the Environmental Protection Act
• The
delegates will report to the Minister for Environment with recommendations as
to whether the proposal should proceed, and, if so, under what conditions
Minister’s office - 6552 5800
Photo Damian Kelly
Posts
What this article fails to mention is that Wheatstone is on the mainland and Gorgon is on an A class nature reserve island.
ReplyDeleteIt also does not mention that Gorgons problems stem from management being unable to get their heads around simple things like loading barges in the correct order.
Had Gorgon been built on the mainland (most of the land around Onslow was seriously degraded by sheep grazing a century ago) the cost and time blowout would have been far less.
The $ played it's part - but Chevron and Barnett don't like to see their flawed reasoning for building on Barrow.
Chevron thought they could save a billion on pipes and Barnett could tell the world........only in WA.....
..
$A's fall relieves stress for LNG sites
MATT CHAMBERS THE AUSTRALIAN FEBRUARY 03, 2014 12:00AM
THE falling dollar has eased the pressure on foreign investors building massive projects in Australia, leading to the possibility that Chevron's $US29 billion ($33bn) Wheatstone project in Western Australia could deliver the first on-budget LNG project approved in the nation in more than a decade.
Chevron chief John Watson said the slide in the currency to below US90c had taken a lot of pressure off the US dollar Wheatstone budget, which is the one its investors and the energy sector outside Australia is watching.
The project, which will process offshore gas at an Onslow LNG plant, is just 27 per cent complete, meaning it is way too early to make a call on whether it will make budget.
But Chevron counted on a US-Australian dollar exchange rate at parity when it approved Wheatstone in 2011.
If it can keep a lid on its costs and apply lessons learned at the $US11bn over-budget Gorgon project it is building at Barrow Island, it has a good chance of making the Wheatstone budget.
It would also repair some of Australia's reputational damage done by cost blowouts at Gorgon and other mega-projects.
Analyst predicts Kimberley gas hub investment unlikely in short-term
ReplyDeleteA resource analyst says it is unlikely any companies would want to invest in the Western Australian Government's Kimberley gas processing site for at least several years.
The Government yesterday confirmed it was proceeding with fresh environmental assessments of its Browse precinct, north of Broome.
The original approvals, conducted by the Environmental Protection Authority, were thrown out by the Supreme Court.
Three new delegates have been appointed to assess the project afresh, despite there being no companies which have publicly expressed interest in using the precinct.
Equities analyst Simon Andrew says high labour costs, red tape and advances in floating liquefied natural gas technology make it unlikely companies will be interested in processing on shore any time soon.
"At the minute I would have thought it's highly unlikely," he said.
"Five years is a long time to look at but certainly within three years I'd think it highly unlikely that you'd see any major development at that site.
"Look, I think the whole north-west shelf gas is still a fantastic story but it's going to be that cost of new projects that will mean that companies are perhaps far less likely to pull a trigger on new projects than they were five or 10 years ago."
We are forever stuck in this strange place where for all the wrong reasons our advice is ignored.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet time after time we are proved right.
But still these right wing "we know best" mob carry on making the same mistakes over and over.
"If nature and natural resources exist as things to be conquered, exploited or used to make moral profits, then regulation that prevents this by definition is immoral. When it comes to conservation, environmental protection and climate change mitigation, the conservative morality of Abbott sees laws that protect biodiversity and our natural heritage as illegitimate hindrances to the moral activity of making profits."
Nelson Mandela :
ReplyDelete"“there can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children...”
...
Child abuse ignored to avert 'political event'
QUEENSLAND'S police and state government believed a pedophile network operating in Brisbane during 1975 was potentially abusing children from a Salvation Army home, the royal commission has heard. Despite this, as well as receiving other allegations of physical and sexual abuse, the government took relatively little action against the Christian organisation, amid reluctance among senior staff "to have a political event".
.....
Governments have failed children in need, royal commission told
Former residents have cried as they recalled years of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Salvation Army officers and older boys in the 1960s and 1970s.
Janice Doyle was a supervisor at the Queensland Department of Children's Services in 1975 and observed conditions in Salvation Army homes at Riverview and Indooroopilly.
The chairman of the royal commission, Justice Peter McClellan, asked Ms Doyle why the problem of child abuse was so extensive.
He then adjourned the hearing for 20 minutes to help the former public servant gather her thoughts.
"We have historically provided a poor service for poor children," Ms Doyle told the commission when it resumed.
"No government has ever really paid the money that it really requires to care for someone else's child."
Ms Doyle told the hearing governments have historically felt they "owned" a child and could do anything they want.
"From my own personal experience, having been a public servant and a senior public servant in the Queensland public service, the political influence of 'Don't have an incident. If you do, keep it quiet, manage it well' was quite real for all workers," she said.
"I think the political influence that has occurred from both governments in recent years has been horrendous."
.....
UN denounces Vatican over child abuse and demands immediate action
Devastating UN report demands Vatican 'immediately remove' all clergy who are known or suspected child abusers
The Vatican has failed to acknowledge the huge scale of clerical sex abuse and has implemented policies that have led to "the continuation of the abuse and the impunity of the perpetrators", a UN panel said on Wednesday in a scathing rebuke of the Holy See's handling of the global scandal.
In grimly worded findings released by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the watchdog urged the Holy See to "immediately remove all known and suspected child sexual abusers" from their posts in the church and hand over the cases to law enforcement authorities in the countries concerned.
Nelson Mandela :
ReplyDelete"“there can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children...”
...
Aboriginal teaching assistants hit in budget cuts appeal to the Education Minister
Aboriginal teaching assistants whose jobs have been axed as part of recent budget cuts, have appealed directly to the Education Minister for their jobs to be reinstated.
More than 100 full-time Aboriginal and Islander Education Officers jobs have been cut as part of a broader plan to cut more than $100 million from the State education budget.
Most of those positions were in country schools.
The Government says cutting the 100 AIEO positions will save $2.3 million.
Several of the education officers yesterday met the Education Minister Peter Collier, arguing Aboriginal students will suffer.
......
COLIN Barnett has long despised the term "boom" to describe the economic revolution in Western Australia over the past decade.
That's because the Premier and cheerleader-in-chief for WA believes this time really is different and there will be no "bust" that will spoil the party.
In Barnett's view, the state is experiencing an economic transformation fuelled by China and other emerging Asian nations that will last for decades."
...
"Gross state product, which takes into account trade as well as domestic spending, grew a record 6.7 per cent last financial year to reach $236bn.
This means that if WA were a separate country, it would rank among the world's top 40 economies when measured by GDP, roughly equivalent in size to Egypt, Portugal and Israel.
And if anyone on the other side of the Nullarbor still feels sorry for those in WA consider this: Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the "boom" has delivered WA a GDP per capita of more than $100,000.
That sort of wealth means West Australians are now ranked only below the mega-wealthy residents of Monaco, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein and ahead of Norway, Qatar and Switzerland."
...
State of the States report: WA still riding resources boom as top economic performer, Tasmania at bottom end
...
Senator Ludlam said WA residents had largely missed out at the expense of the mining industry.
"Most of the investment in WA sails completely over the heads of West Australians and is going to land directly in the pockets of mining companies," he said.
"It's a dramatic mis-allocation of resources."
...
S&P moved to trim the rating to AA-plus (stable) because of fears about the government’s commitment to bring down the state’s $28.4 billion debt,
.
... the Barnett government is giving the lie to Abbott’s claim that better fiscal management is somehow in the Liberals’ DNA. And that’s despite both states enjoying resources booms and both governments boosting mining royalties ahead of the introduction of the ALP government’s mining tax, thinking themselves very clever by undermining the federal mining tax for revenue and partisan reasons.
The problem is, while the Labor government in Canberra copped so much criticism for its fiscal management, it was doing the hard yards while Barnett was sitting on his backside.
...
Western Australia ready to assist Africa's mining sector
PERTH, Australia, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Resource-rich Western Australia has signaled it wants to work with African governments to help boost their mining industries. Western Australia Premier Colin Barnett told The Australian newspaper he was willing to offer the state's advice to Africa on mining laws, tax regimes, tenement schemes, tax systems and environmental and safety measures similar to Australia. Barnett noted that Africa has about 30 percent of the world's minerals reserves, but the continent needs to improve the regulation of the mining sector. While Western Australia is the biggest mining economy in the world, Barnett told the newspaper, "the state's long-term future is not only here, it's also in being part of Africa's development."
One government CAN spend wisely: Everyone in Norway becomes a millionaire as parliament's cash stockpiles reach 1,000,000 kroner for each person
ReplyDeleteSovereign wealth fund ballooned due to high oil and gas prices
Set up in 1990, the fund owns around 1 percent of the world's stocks
Money is equivalent to £100,000 in sterling per person
.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has ballooned so much due to high oil and gas prices that every person in the country became a theoretical millionaire this week.
The Nordic nation is proving to be an exception as others struggle under a mountain of debts.
Set up in 1990, the fund owns around 1 percent of the world's stocks, as well as bonds and real estate from London to Boston.
The surplus revenue is collected in the Government Pension Fund Global.
.
This equates to fractionally more than a million times Norway's most recent official population estimate of 5,096,300.
It was the first time it reached the equivalent of a million kroner each, central bank spokesman Thomas Sevang said.
Not that Norwegians will be able to access or spend the money - it is squirreled away for a rainy day for them and future generations.
.
The fund, equivalent to 183 percent of 2013 gross domestic product, is expected to peak at 220 percent around 2030.
'The fund is a success in the sense that parliament has managed to put aside money for the future. There are many examples of countries that have mot managed that,' said Oeystein Doerum, chief economist at DNB Markets.
Norway has sought to avoid the boom and bust cycle by investing the cash abroad, rather than at home.
?????????????????????????
So where's ours?
A. - In the pockets of the mining billionaires cruising the Bahamas.
HOW SOME CUT CORNERS ARE THREATENING THE HEALTH OF ROEBUCK BAY AND THE SAFETY OF ALL THAT USE IT.
ReplyDeleteThis morning on Kimberley Radio a guy from Water Corp was explaining how the water treatment ponds (sewerage ponds) on Clementson St. were leaking into the Bay.
They had spent 2 years looking at this and would spend another 2 years finding out why.
Quite a few people who were here in '96 when the ponds were being built would remember the dead slack manner WAWA (Water Corp) went about constructing them.
Not long after the project got under way - with Water Corp foremen and inspectors - the big vibrator roller broke down.
Instead of fixing it up it was decided to continue the work and use the Cat 960 front end loader to "wheel roll" the dirt instead.
The 960 was being used to push out the dirt after the trucks had tipped it.
The 960 had big fat tyres so did very little to compact anything.
ALL THIS WAS ALLOWED TO HAPPEN UNDER THE WATCH OF WATER CORP.
As most of us know a few years later when the first really big rain came along the ponds broke and 100's of 1000's of tons of shit broke through the sand dunes and into the bay.
The Bay has never been the same since.
NOW - surprise surprise - the ponds are leaking 24/7.
Water Corp was well aware at the time what went on and should know the only way these ponds will ever be right is if they are completely ripped out and done all over again.
BUT THIS TIME WITH A BIG VIBRATOR ROLLER TO COMPACT THE DIRT.
DICKHEADS !
SORRY FOR THE TYPO -
DeleteTHE LOADER WAS A CAT 950
NOT 960
It was hired from a local company.