Coal Seam Gas Fracking Under Fire In Australia

An Australian state moved this week to ban coal seam gas fracking operations in the vicinity of watersheds. 

New South Wales Resources Minister Chris Hartcher announced a "temporary ban across thousands of hectares of land surrounding Wollongong and in the Blue Mountains National Park," the Australian reported this week.  

"The NSW government recognizes community concerns that accessing and performing drilling in these pristine areas may have an effect on the drinking water supplies to Sydney and the Illawarra," Hartcher said in the article. 

Australia is rich with coal deposits valuable for extracting natural gas known as coal seam gas (CSG). The industry is going through an expansion in Australia, according to ABC News Breakfast.  

Australia is not the only place to find coal seam gas. "The United States has been utilizing vast quantities of coal seam methane in its natural gas supply since the early 1990s. This can be supplied directly to homes and businesses for use in cooking and heating,” according to the World Coal Association.

Ian Duncan, a scientist at the University of Texas, compared the growth in the seam gas industry in Australia—and corresponding concerns around groundwater—to the shale gas boom in the U.S. 

"The main similarities between what we're looking at in the U.S. in shale gas and coal seam gas is they use similar technologies, hydraulic fracturing, and they have some of the same infrastructure for transporting gas and compressing it, so we have some of the same issues with the possibility of groundwater contamination," Duncan said on ABC News. 

Most water industry professionals in Australia believe coal seam gas projects pose a threat to groundwater, the Australian reported in a previous article. 

Those findings came from a report by Deloitte and the Australian Water Association, which revealed that "71 percent of the 1500 people surveyed believe coal-seam gas extraction is a significant or moderate risk to the management of ground and surface water. About 16 per cent say they don't know," according to the Australian. 

"Water has been a major concern for environmental groups worried about the impact on aquifers used by farmers near sites used for drilling for CSG and the nation's largest groundwater basin, the Great Artesian Basin," the Australian said.  

"Coal seam gas uses enormous amounts of water, one of Australia's scarcest resources," ABC News 24 reported. 

A United Nations report said this year that "coal seam gas exploitation could also lead to gas escaping into the atmosphere and required higher caution to avoid infiltrations to the water table," according to the Courier Mail. 

Read more about fracking and water contamination on Water Online.

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