CPA - The Guardian

Across Eastern Australia disputes are erupting between coal mining corporations and farmers over extraction of coal seam gas (CSG). Under current legislation farmers only own their topsoil. Licensed mining companies are entitled to enter farms to carry out drilling or other operations.

Farmers may take legal action, but if they lose the case their only safeguards are the minor restrictions imposed in some states. CSG mining is banned within 200 metres of a house or 50 metres of a garden in NSW. The government of Queensland (which now has $46 billion in CSG investments) has imposed a ban on mining within two kilometres of towns, and other states have limitations, but none of them pose a real obstacle to the mining juggernauts.

CSG extraction is also proposed for cities. One company wants to operate in the former brickfields site at St Peters, an inner Sydney suburb.

People have good reasons to be concerned about the extraction of coal seam gas (also known as coal bed methane). Extraction involves a hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” process. This requires pressure injection of fluids containing many toxic elements, including benzene, toluene and xylene, which can cause severe burns and rashes.

Corporation representatives have admitted that fracking fluids penetrate aquifers, but they claim that pressure injection occurs at great depths, so water extracted for drinking and agriculture from aquifers at higher levels is unaffected.

However, many cases of ruined water supplies in Australia, Canada and the United States have disproved this. In some towns near CSG mining sites piped water can even be set alight because of the presence of methane and fracking chemicals.

Each fracking operation consumes huge quantities of water, nearly 20 million litres according to one report. Methane, which is about 23 times more damaging as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, frequently escapes from gas wells, destroying nearby vegetation. The US environmental Protection Agency is studying risks associated with fracking, including the triggering of earthquakes.

The energy race

The reason for the rush to extract CS gas lies in energy generation. Most of Australia’s electricity comes from coal-fired power stations, which produce almost fifty percent of Australia’s emissions of carbon dioxide, the main contributor to climate change.

Environmental groups, left and progressive parties and a growing section of capital want Australia’s energy to be derived from renewable sources, not fossil fuels.

Large-scale renewable power is currently more expensive compared to coal-fired power, because of differences in economies of scale, technological development and establishment costs.

But that’s changing. Near Alice Springs a private company is using standard solar technology to produce power at almost the same cost as coal-fired plants. Large scale base load solar power plants already operate in Europe and the US.

Coal-fired power production costs should also begin to rise because of the slight impact of the federal carbon tax, whereas the cost of renewable energy should fall because of technological development, with assistance from government funding as part of the carbon tax arrangements.

When the cost of energy from renewable sources reaches parity with that of coal, capital investment in domestic power generation will begin to desert the coal industry. There are no friends in business.

Many of Australia’s coal-fired power plants will require replacement within twenty years. CS gas occurs in many coal deposits, so the mining corporations are promoting the use of gas, which they claim emits only half the carbon dioxide produced by coal-fired plants, as an alternative to coal for power production.

There is not sufficient natural gas in major conventional gas deposits such as South Australia’s Moonbah field to act as a substitute for coal – hence the rush by corporations to lay their hands on the smaller coal seam gas deposits. Other non-conventional gas extraction includes shale gas and “tight” gas mining. The corporations are even backing coal seam gas at the expense of coal itself, because the extraction of coal is usually not feasible after fracking has collapsed the seams.

Claims about low emissions from gas-fired power plants have been challenged by the Greens. They maintain that if the escape of gas during extraction is taken into account there is very little difference during the total industrial cycle between emissions from gas-fired and coal-fired plants.

Moreover, the corporations are sidestepping the major issue, i.e. if the combustion of coal produces harmful emissions, why not replace it with an energy source that produces no emissions at all, rather than one that produces less?

Seismic shifts

Farmers are now vigorously opposing the fossil fuel industry, because of the threat posed to their livelihoods, health and environment by coal mining (particularly open cut) and coal seam gas extraction.

This trend, combined with the growing political strength of the renewable energy industries, constitutes a major headache for the Liberal Party. It has benefited from the support of more conservative rural voters, but it’s also beholden to the mining industry as the dominant sector of capital within Australia.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott recently declared that farmers should be entitled to bar the entry of mining personnel if they wanted to, but the next day he made a sullen retreat. NSW Liberal Premier Barry O’Farrell said all wind farms should be banned, but hastily added that this was not necessarily his party’s opinion.

In contrast, National Senator Barnaby Joyce says prime agricultural land must be protected, and there has even been a hint from the Nationals of a possible future alliance with the Greens. The disproportionately high voting power of rural electorates has historically favoured the parties of town and country capital, but a swing to left and progressive forces would reverse the conservatives’ advantage.

At stake is Australia’s contribution to the global struggle over climate change, as well as our potential to feed ourselves and the world. The land grab by CSG mining corporations threatens to ruin vast areas of agricultural land, all for the profits of an industry that may well be largely superseded in twenty years.

It is a dangerous but exciting time in Australian politics.

Next article – BlueScope/OneSteel – neo-liberalism’s twisted logic

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