THE state’s Environmental Protection Authority has pre-empted potential concerns about using hydraulic fracture stimulation to extract gas from underground formations in Western Australia with the release of its guidelines on the subject.
The release of the guideline on ‘fraccing’, as it is known in the industry, came as the EPA announced its decision not to assess two projects involving this technology in the Perth Basin, near Eneabba in the Mid West.
The EPA decision not to assess fraccing at the AWE-operated Woodada Deep-01 well, 10 kilometres west of Eneabba, and the Norwest Energy-operated Arrowsmith 2 well 30km to the north means in the regulator’s view any impact can be managed without going through environmental assessment.
“They are not full-scale projects,” an EPA spokesperson said. “They are small scale; they are really proof-of-concept.”
Arrowsmith 2’s biggest stakeholder is AWE, with Norwest and Bharat PetroResources holding nearly 28 per cent each. Woodada is 100 per cent owned by AWE.
AWE produces oil from its 57.5 per cent-owned Cliff Head project off the coast of the Mid West and has operating oil and gas fields onshore. AWE was also seeking approval for another fraccing operation at its Senecio well inland from Dongara.
While there has been significant fraccing in various parts of WA in the past, including the Perth Basin, the method of pumping fluids and other materials at high pressures to open channels in rock formations has generated a significant amount of controversy in times as the hunt for coal seam gas along Australia’s east coast has brought resources companies into conflict with farmers.
The quarterly Rabobank Rural Confidence Survey released this week found that 52 per cent of all farmers surveyed believed coal seam gas exploration to be a threat to agriculture, although those findings are thought to reflect views held most vehemently in the eastern states.
Nevertheless, farmers in WA have also displayed concern about any form of mining or resources that might endanger their livelihoods or future opportunities through damage to the water table.
The issue prompted the WA Farmers Federation to remind its members last month that the state’s laws regarding mining access to land gave them greater rights than in the several of the eastern states where coal seam gas exploration had become a heated issue.
The EPA bulletin said WA had the fifth largest shale gas reserves in the world.
