Office of Coal Seam Gas suspends Metgasco drilling license

Resources company Metgasco’s project on the north west coast of New South Wales (NSW) has been suspended by the Office of Coal Seam Gas (OCSG).

Metgasco had been approved to drill a gas exploration well –Rosella E01 – at Bentley in NSW, approximately 12 km northeast of Casino and 13 km west of Lismore.

State energy minister, Anthony Roberts, referred the project to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) and announced that Metgasco’s project will now be suspended due to insufficient community consultation.

Roberts said that the OCSG told Metgasco the license will be suspended bycause the company “"did not fulfil a condition of its exploration licence, namely to undertake genuine and effective consultation with the community as required."

A lack of consultation and communication certainly seems to be a major stumbling block in the saga, with many under the impression that the Bentley site is a coalbed methane (CBM) project, when in fact it is not.

The Rosella E01 project is a tight sands gas drill site, however, a number of Australian media outlets have wrongly reported that the suspended project is CBM.

The spreading of this misinformation has been taken to heart by anti-CBM groups, who have protested about CBM at the tight-sands site since March.

The controversial protest group has resolutely set up shop at the Bentley farm. The encamped protestors have been warned by local government authorities for mismanaging the land and threatened with police eviction. In April, Richmond Valley mayor, Ernie Bennett, said the ‘lock the gate’ protestors had welded gates shut, dug trenches through public roads, erected their own road signs and had insufficient toilet and washing facilities to continue living there.

While the protestors celebrate stopping the drilling programme, under the mistaken impression that it was a CBM site, others in the community have been hit badly by the news.

Peter Graham, the farmer on whose land the exploration well was to be drilled, said that he was devastated with the suspension of the license. “It’s like someone ripped my heart out,” he told local media. 

Edited from various sources by Sam Dodson

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcoal.com/cbm/16052014/metgasco%E2%80%99s_drilling_license_suspended_cbm35/