WA Department of Mines and Petroleum director Bill Tinapple said there was potential in WA for a US-style shale gas frenzy in WA and the State Government was keen to welcome shale gas explorers with open arms.
Speaking yesterday at the 2011 Good Oils Conference in Fremantle,Tinapple said government was keen to provide incentives, including assisting in the formation of drilling clubs and the building of infrastructure in key shale areas including the Canning and Perth basins.
Despite this enthusiasm, he admitted that shale development in WA faces uncertainty due to public concerns over fraccing.
Tinapple said the department was caught offside by the level of community concern over fraccing in the state.
“It actually caught us by surprise the level of public concern and push back which we have seen in Western Australia,” he said.
“We’re trying to go through a process of making information available to the public on our website and running community workshops.
Tinapple continued with the now-farmiliar line that fracking in WA is different from the environmentally damaging coal seam gas industry in the Eastern states and USA.
“There’s no evidence that [fraccing] activity has caused pollution, so at the moment we’re working on a public discussion to let people know that the targets we’re talking about here in WA are not those like in NSW or Queensland … these are deep targets,” he said.
“In Western Australia it’s quite interesting that we’ve actually had fraccing here for 40 years and 750 frac jobs have been done, which is a surprise to many people,” he said.
“A lot of the frac jobs have been done on Barrow Island trying to increase the oil there but there have been 40 in the Perth Basin too.”
However, he added that the system currently in place would need to be tested as shale exploration and associated fraccing activity started to ramp up.
Currently the DMP requires detailed information to be submitted to determine whether a fracture program can be carried out, including the scale of the program; distances from the nearest aquifer/s; all chemical additives used in operation; volumes, management and disposal of water; integrity of well casings; fracture modelling and monitoring of fraccing; and long-term monitoring to determine whether chemical contamination is an issue.
None of this information is available to the public, or even State Parliament as recent questions from Greens Member Alison Xammon have revealed. The Deparment claim that the information is 'commercial in confidence' and cannot be disclosed to the public. Given this, it is impossible for the WA community to have confidence in the adaquacy of the current regulatory framework for fracking in WA.
CCWA has called for a moratorium on all fracking activity in WA until a transparent and effective regulatory framework is established that can guarantee protection of the environment and groundwater resources.
Parts of this story were originally published by Petroleumnews.net
