PORT Fairy’s James Purcell has fired a veiled shot at Australia’s richest woman Gina Rinehart by calling for the state’s moratorium on unconventional gas exploration to be extended indefinitely.
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Ms Rinehart is a major shareholder in Lakes Oil, which has been stymied in its plans to drill in its permit areas across south-west Victoria between Geelong and the South Australian border.
Mr Purcell, who is running for the upper house seat of Western Victoria as the Vote1Local Jobs party founder, singled out Lakes Oil in his campaign.
“A company in which Gina Rinehart is the major shareholder has secured exploration rights to decimate south-west Victoria’s underground coal seam to extract gas,” Mr Purcell said.
“Lakes Oil has acquired permits which effectively gives it the right to drill for gas across south-west Victoria between Portland and Warrnambool up to near Hamilton.
“Our agriculture industry and town water supplies are under threat by the coal seam gas movement.”
Mr Purcell’s claims annoyed Lakes Oil boss Robert Annells, who yesterday told The Standard the company clearly indicated on its website and other communications that its developments were not linked to controversial coal bed methane extraction.
Mr Annells described claims by politicians and environmentalists that the company would ruin aquifers and drill near residential areas of Geelong and Anglesea as “beat-ups”.
He said there was clearly community confusion over mining methods. In areas where gas is trapped in deep rock formations, water, sand and other additives are used to fracture the rock (fracking) while in areas where methane is trapped in coal seams the water content is extracted to liberate gas.
“We do use hydraulic fracturing where needed to extract gas, but our methods are not a risk to the environment,” he said.
Mr Annells said the company was puzzled by the government’s rationale in preventing it from proceeding with plans to drill for gas in the Nirranda district near where Origin Energy operated an onshore rig to tap offshore reserves.
The Standard sought independent scientific opinion from University of Newcastle lecturer Doctor Judith Bailey who said unconventional gas exploration had raised community concerns nationally.
“Even the chief scientist in NSW says there are risks in the industry and more research is needed,” Dr Bailey said.
“Hydraulic fracturing is a very inexact science. We would like to see Australian companies say no harmful chemicals are used in fracking.”
Mr Purcell has called for unconventional gas extraction methods to be banned outright or at least put on hold while more research was done.
