Feature image: Coonamble community rounded up trespassing gas employees and consultants in November 2017 and sent them packing Santos contractor the APA Group ($APA:ASX) has quietly revived its East Coast gas ambitions after an earlier failed attempt to begin the Western Slopes Pipeline. The company faced united community opposition from Coonamble and surrounds in 2017-2018 as it tried to conduct surveys to inform its Environmental Impact Assessment. Accused of trespass by landowners along the proposed pipeline route and of breaching the Agreed Principles of Land Access Memorandum of Understanding entered into by Santos…continue reading →

While the NSW Government continues to face trenchant opposition to the coal seam gas industry from all quarters of society, close attention should be paid to the regulatory scheme in Queensland which the Government is likely to attempt to adopt. According to sources close to the NSW Nationals Leader and Minister for Resources John Barilaro, at the centre of the proposed scheme is a GasFields Commission style of statutory body coupled with legislation that will remove rural land from the planning system and thus eliminate the requirement for environmental impact assessment of gas…continue reading →

Green policing and compliance monitoring of company operations is an important contribution to the campaign to keep the Pilliga CSG free. Citizen monitoring and science can play a unique role, just the presence of people in the forest encourages the company to meet their regulatory obligations.

June 2021 marks ten years since this pollution event happened in the forest, signifying a decade of community resistance against Santos and its predecessor Eastern Star Gas which Santos bought in 2011. It was 4am on the 25th June, 2011, when a pipe burst, a fail-safe switch failed and a conservatively estimated 10,000 litres of toxic coal seam gas waste went slowly flowing onto the ground in the Pilliga East State Forest. The Pilliga in its entirety is the largest temperate woodland in Eastern Australia and threatened by an 850-well coal seam gas…continue reading →

Following nearly a year of swirling allegations that Whitehaven Coal has been using its Maules Creek Coal Mine as an unofficial landfill to bury industrial tyres and waste oil, the Resource Assessments branch of the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment has approved two of Whitehaven’s other Namoi mines to bury off-the-road (OTR) tyres from mining vehicles. Feature Image: Example of the tyres being buried in their hundreds at Namoi Valley coal mines (Image supplied) A scandal concerning mass industrial tyre burials at Whitehaven Coal’s mines has embroiled three regulators, including the…continue reading →

The NSW Environment Protection Authority’s latest changes to Santos’ Environmental Protection Licence EPL 20350 include permission to transport and dispose of drill cuttings from the coal seam gas mining process, on site in the Pilliga State Forest which is a recharge zone of the Great Artesian Basin. This condition was approved in just 23 days and there is no available analysis of the chemical composition of the cuttings. The Licence changes will now free the way for Santos to dispose of this waste, which is known to be linked with elevated levels of…continue reading →

A landmark decision has been passed unanimously at the 2021 Annual General Meeting of the NSW Country Women’s Association calling on the NSW Government to cease the practice of offering Mineral Exploration Licences to $2 companies.The motion by White Cliffs Branch, which is part of the Darling River Group, refers to the practice of allowing companies with only $2 capitalisation to approach farmers to gain access to land for prospecting, placing the burden of risk and damage to their properties on landowners and not the mining companies. White Cliffs CWA members Penne Clarke,…continue reading →

A fresh report from IEEFA, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, has called the Vickery Extension Coal project a “folly” and a “stranded project”. The Institute states that Whitehaven Coal’s “wealth destruction is extreme and ongoing”. Vickery, an audacious 10 million tonnes per annum approval originally planned to include an open cut coal pit directly on the Namoi River, is located in the northern part of the Liverpool Plains between Gunnedah and Boggabri. “A decade on from the acquisition of the Vickery coal deposit, the strategic or economic merit of Whitehaven…continue reading →