What do you do when the oil and gas industry tries
to force its way into your community, threatening your health, your way of
life, and your future? Ask the Broome community.
- • Educate community about fracking.
- • Motivate action.
- • Lobby the investment community
- • Push government into compliance and monitoring action and prosecution as described in legislation
- • Engage in the corrupted approval process (got to be in it to win it)
- • Collect our own base data, do the science and monitor the sites
- • Waylay their equipment and workers.
- • Delay them in their operations.
- • Provide our own updates to the share market.
- Take them thought the Courts.
- • And stop the project
Buru Energy and Mitsubishi have a Google researched
template about how to deal with Broome and the Kimberley Indigenous communities
who oppose their fracking plans for the Canning Basin, in the Kimberley.
- • To beat us
- To divide us
- • To convince us (or the kids in schools)
- • To pretend they are listening/care!
- • To make concerned community members exclude themselves from Buru’s process (road map)
- • To lure in collaboration
- • To get us to abandon the issue
This is never going to happen given Broome’s recent
history. We are so much wiser now with our Woodside abrasions that Buru
Energy’s weekly half page ads in the local paper are heedless in their efforts
to convince anyone. On the contrary, these ads just scream “BURU BULLSHIT” to
the readers.
Buru’s clinical template to undermine our community
will not work. Woodside also made the very same mistake, they underestimated
our community’s tenacity and our "never ever give up” aptitudes.
In communities across the world, people are
standing up to the fracking industry, passing bans and limits on fracking and
defending their right to do so in court. When the gas industry tries to bully
communities into backing down or shutting up, communities are fighting back—and
winning.
Buru’s
bullshiters and their cohorts may wish it were otherwise, but communities have
the right to determine what types of development and land use is appropriate
within their area. They issue the Social Licence to operate. The
Broome community has clearly shown that they are firmly committed to defending
that right.
Buru Energy's toxic unfenced tailings dams at Yullaroo, just north of Broome have been left unattended and unmanaged. These toxic tailings dams posed an ongoing threat, not just to birds and animal populations but to our ground water and downstream human communities.
Species that rely on water, especially in dry areas, this can be devastating. Radioactive waste water is stored in these dams and poison birds and other animals: goannas', bilbies and kangaroos that land in, swim in, or drink or fall into this toxic soup. Wastewater is also a breeding ground for mosquitos, which can transmit various diseases to birds, animals and people.
Photo Damian Kelly
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Barnett sounds happy
ReplyDelete.
WA in line for more gas royalties after boundary change in Browse Basin
Posted Wed 14 May 2014
Premier Colin Barnett has previously estimated WA's share of the field at 30 per cent, but today Mr Marmion told Parliament it could now be as high as 50 per cent.
"That's great news for Western Australia, it means we have a greater percentage of the field, and as people know in this House the royalties percentage will then be a lot greater to West Australian than the Commonwealth."
Oil and gas producer, Woodside Petroleum, wants to use floating liquefied natural gas technology to develop the fields.
Ownership of the Torosa field has long been a source of debate between WA and Canberra.
Mr Marmion said WA Department of Mines and Petroleum staff were working closely with the Commonwealth to establish the exact size of WA's share.
"There is still much detail to be examined but the implications are significant because seven of 13 blocks in the Torosa field will be affected in varying degrees," he said.
Mr Barnett said it was good news for WA.
"It means WA's ownership share of the Browse gas is higher than previously thought," he said in a statement.
"This means, in the longer term, increased royalties from the project for the state.
"WA will work cooperatively with the Commonwealth and the joint venture partners to the bring the project into production."
........................
Floating LNG processing puts jobs at risk, parliamentary committee says
Committee members criticised former resources minister Gary Gray for allowing Woodside to use FLNG to develop Browse.
Fran Logan, one of the committee members, said Mr Gray's variation of the retention leases cost thousands of WA jobs.
Committee members also accused oil and gas companies of not acting in the interests of WA.
The inquiry found FLNG would generate less income for the state than processing the same fields using onshore processing, adding it was "something that should be of serious concern to the State Government".
The committee stated that natural gas is "incredibly important" to the state as approximately 60 per cent of WA's electricity generation is fuelled by natural gas.
It said the natural gas produced in WA is at the heart of Australia's LNG export industry.
States to have say on 'water trigger' for coal and CSG projects
ReplyDeleteThe mining industry says amendments to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act introduced into Federal Parliament yesterday won't reduce environmental protections.
One amendment to the EPBC act will see state governments taking over the environmental approvals process relating the water trigger legislation.
The water trigger, introduced by former Independent Tony Windsor, means all new coal and coal seam gas operations need to be assessed for potential impacts on water resources.
Environment groups say the government wants to strip away protection for groundwater, but Melanie Stutsel, environment direct with the Minerals Council of Australia, says that's not the case.
"These amendments provide no change to the water trigger. It just provides the simple ability for the the states to actually conduct the assessment or approval on behalf of the Commonwealth.
"The actual content of the water trigger, the environmental measures that it seeks to protect, the risk-based approach it takes, is unaffected by these amendments."
The amendments to the EPBC Act, which also cover bilateral agreements between states and the Commonwealth, are part of the Federal Government's policy to reduce so-called 'green tape'.
It is implementing a 'one-stop-shop' for all environmental approvals to give the states greater control and reduce duplicative processes.
The changes also give the Independent Scientific Committee the ability to provide expert advice to all states, not just Queensland and New South Wales.
Devolving the decision-making over the water trigger legislation has enraged environmental groups.
Jonathan La Nauze, of the Australian Conservation Foundation, says state governments can't be trusted because they're compromised.
"We have just seen, this week, the Queensland Government approve the biggest coal mine in Australia's history, going against the expert advice of the Independent Scientific Committee.
"These are going to be the same people make the same decisions, at liberty to ignore the science.
"We have no confidence in the ability of state governments to make an arm's length, independent decision on the impact of large mines on our water resources.
"The problem is that state governments are tied at the hip to the mining industry, because they've got a very limited revenue base, and mining royalties make up a significant part of that.
"So state governments are inherently conflicted when it comes to approving these massive projects."
What the hell is going on at Henderson ?
ReplyDelete.
Crane rolls, injuring a worker in the industrial suburb of Henderson
WorkSafe is investigating a second accident in three days involving cranes at the Australian Marine Complex, south of Fremantle.
A 25-tonne crane toppled over on the Quill Way property just after 7:00am while being turned around.
One of the workers was taken to Fremantle Hospital but his injuries are not life-threatening.
WorkSafe said a 250-tonne crane collapsed at the same complex on Tuesday.
The AMC precinct, about 23 kilometres south of Perth, contains more than 150 businesses geared towards manufacturing for the marine, defence and resource industries.
The AMC is overseen by the Western Australian Government through the Department of Commerce.
The Department of Commerce's John O'Hare said work has been suspended on the site until WorkSafe completes an investigation.
He said on Tuesday, a hire crane being serviced by a contractor tipped over. But it was not carrying a load, and no one was injured.
WorkSafe was also investigating that incident.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/us/californias-thirst-shapes-debate-over-fracking.html?hpw&rref=us
ReplyDeleteCalifornia’s Thirst Shapes Debate Over Fracking
By NORIMITSU ONISHIMAY 14, 2014
OROVILLE, Calif. — Enemies of fracking have a new argument: drought.
Fracking a single oil well in California last year took 87 percent of the water consumed in a year by a family of four, according to the Western States Petroleum Association, an industry lobbying group. That amount — a modest one by national standards, the oil industry argues — has become an increasingly delicate topic since a drought was officially declared early this year in the state.
The drought, combined with a recent set of powerful earthquakes, has provided the momentum for about a dozen local governments across California, the third-largest oil producing state, to vote to restrict or prohibit fracking in their jurisdictions, as concerns over environmental effects and water usage have grown.
At the same time, a bill that would declare a statewide moratorium on fracking has been gathering support in the State Senate, a year after a similar effort failed.
“There will be a statewide moratorium, whether it comes this year, next year or the year after that,” said Kathryn Phillips, the director of Sierra Club California, a leading opponent of fracking. “Even if we don’t get a moratorium, just the threat of a moratorium discourages investment.”
The oil and gas industry says that fracking’s opponents have exploited the emotions surrounding the drought to push for unnecessary restrictions. The Western States Petroleum Association argues that “the amount of water used here is quite small when compared to other uses for water.”
Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the association, said she found it frustrating that the drought and earthquakes had given her opponents such momentum. “Both of these issues are being used because it elevates the conversation, because people would be concerned normally about water in a drought year and any kind of seismic activity,” she said.
The anti-fracking bill in California, which faces an uphill battle, would not be the first: Vermont banned fracking in 2012, and New York and North Carolina have temporary bans while the states study the impact, which is what California proposes to do. In Colorado, environmental activists, after failing to persuade lawmakers to ban fracking, are now promoting a ballot initiative that would limit the practice. But only in California are water issues being cited front and center.
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Officials here in Butte County moved last month to ban the fracking of oil and gas wells, quickly drawing up a plan during a public meeting filled with fracking opponents. The speed of the decision surprised the activists who had pressed for more modest regulation — especially since there is no fracking going on here.
But the county is home to Lake Oroville, the state’s second-largest water reservoir, which now holds only two-thirds of the water it should at this time of year. On a recent sun-filled morning, houseboats at a marina were anchored in clusters as if near the bottom of a bathtub.
Dave Garcia, a leader of the Butte Citizens Action Network, a local environmental group, said, “Water played a huge role” in the vote by the Butte County Board of Supervisors to ban fracking.
Besides the drought, seismic activity in March in Los Angeles — an earthquake with a magnitude of 3.6, followed by a 5.1 temblor in the course of one evening — has also given traction to fracking critics’ arguments that the procedure is simply too dangerous for California.
The oil and gas industry says it has engaged in conventional fracking in California for decades with no seismic consequences. But elsewhere in the country, where companies carry out fracking with new techniques in horizontal drilling and new cocktails of chemicals, experts have been investigating whether fracking has caused earthquakes in places not known for seismic activity, like Oklahoma.
California’s Thirst Shapes Debate Over Fracking
ReplyDelete“It’s a perfect storm of information coming through at once,” said Ms. Phillips of Sierra Club California.
In Southern California, the oil-rich city of Carson recently placed a 45-day moratorium on fracking, Beverly Hills voted to ban it and Los Angeles is preparing an ordinance to do the same. Several other local governments here, including Culver City, Santa Cruz County and Santa Barbara County, have voted to restrict fracking in the last couple of years.
On the state level, the Senate is considering a bill that would delay any fracking until California completes a study of the practice’s impact on the environment and public health. Among the obstacles the bill will face is opposition from legislators who see the economic advantages of fracking and say that existing regulations — including some passed last year — provide the necessary muscle to safeguard the environment.
“The potential effect of this moratorium on jobs is horrendous,” said State Senator Ted Gaines, a Republican, who voted against the bill in committee. “Fracking has occurred in this state for over five decades — we know how to frack in California, and we’ve done it in a safe manner. I think the issue with water was exaggerated in terms of usage.”
A major issue in the political debate is the Monterey Shale, a 1,750-square-mile geological formation stretching from Southern to Central California that is estimated to contain the country’s biggest shale oil reserves. Despite California’s long oil production history, the reserve has been left largely untapped because of the formation’s geological complexity. Advances in drilling and fracking have given hope to drillers that it is only a matter of time before the Monterey Shale’s oil can be profitably extricated.
The prospects of widespread drilling and fracking in the Monterey Shale had already galvanized California’s powerful environmental groups. But the record drought has widened concerns as it pits various industries, groups and regions against one another in another chapter of California’s battle over water.
According to the Western States Petroleum Association, an average of 127,127 gallons of water was used to frack a single oil well in California last year, below the 146,000 gallons consumed by a family of four throughout the year. But critics of fracking point out that advanced techniques, the kind necessary to exploit the Monterey Shale, will require significantly greater amounts of water.
That fear was behind the move by local governments, including Butte County, to prohibit fracking. “Once it becomes economically feasible, they’re going to come to Butte County,” said Mr. Garcia of the Butte Citizens Action Network.
Enough people agreed with Mr. Garcia that Butte County’s Board of Supervisors — made up of three Republicans, one Democrat and one member who has declined to state a party preference — voted 4 to 1 for the ban.
Larry Wahl, a Republican who was the only one to vote against it, said that the decision was made prematurely.
“It was a purely emotional response to a crowd of people who demanded a ban on fracking,” he said.