The New South Wales Chief Scientist, Mary O’Kane, last night delivered her Final Report of the Independent Review of Coal Seam Gas Activities in NSW, which apears to have struck an appropriate balance between the economic opportunities of CSG and health and environment concerns.
The report, which is based on 19 months of investigation, found that most risks to health and the environment from CSG can be managed, although “unintended consequences” are also inevitable, due either to natural disasters, human error, or accidents, which necessarily requires that CSG activities be confined to areas where geology and land-use are appropriate (e.g. in unpopulated areas).
According to the report:
The Review studied the risks associated with the CSG industry in depth and concludes that – provided drilling is allowed only in areas where the geology and hydrogeology can be characterised adequately, and provided that appropriate engineering and scientific solutions are in place to manage the storage, transport, reuse or disposal of produced water and salts – the risks associated with CSG exploration and production can be managed. That said, current risk management needs improvement to reach best practice.
In particularly sensitive areas, such as in and near drinking water catchments, risk management needs to be of a high order with particularly stringent requirements on companies operating there in terms of management, data provision, insurance cover, and incident-response times…
All industries have risks and, like any other, it is inevitable that the CSG industry will have some unintended consequences, including as the result of accidents, human error, and natural disasters. Industry, Government and the community need to work together to plan adequately to mitigate such risks, and be prepared to respond to problems if they occur…
Recommendation 5.1: That Government use its planning powers and capability to designate those areas of the State in which CSG activity is permitted to occur, drawing on appropriate external expertise as necessary…
The report also recommended that data from industry operations be collated in a central repository in order to facilitate greater surveilance and allow for better interrogation, and laws should be supported by a transparent and effective compliance and reporting regime.
All of which seems eminently sensible.
