Artesian Water Basin Issues and how to properly address it!

Moomba workers who sought to remain anonymous told The Australian newspaper on 5 January that the company was running a "cowboy" operation, and that it was luck, not management that had prevented any loss of life. They also said that the emergency muster area was too close to the plant in the event of a major tank explosion.

Gas supplies to South Australia and New South Wales were interrupted, leading to down-time in the manufacturing sector and short-term rationing measures in both states while repairs were made. Santos spent $40 million on remedial action following the incident. In 2011, the South Australian industrial relations court ruled that 13 employees had been placed at risk due to critical safety shortcomings. These included an inadequate risk assessment which failed to identify the likelihood of plant failing due to liquid metal rendering it brittle. The company pleaded guilty to breaching the Occupational Health Safety and Welfare Act after a SafeWork prosecution and was fined $84,000

Our Government needs to stop lying to us! If they were so worried about climate change then they would be not stealing our water and fracking our land! Below is how much water Santos will waste, let alone the environmental impacts on our drinking water!

 

The Below information is Credit to Ian Sutton

 

Disclosure 1 – IMPACTS Of COAL SEAM GAS PRODUCTION ON OUR UNDERGROUND WATER SYSTEMS

Pushing us beyond the brink!

Both biological (decomposition) and geological (pressure and heat) processes are involved in the formation of coal. Natural gas production (predominately methane) is a by-product of both these processes. It is this gas stored deep below the ground, trapped within the coal seam aquifers, that the Coal Seam Gas industry mine.

The process by which they trap the gas requires enormous and unsustainable amounts of water to be extracted from our ground water resources in order to depressurise the coal seam. Its only after the water pressure within the ground is sufficiently reduced will the gas be free to flow.

How much produced water does one coal seam gas well average per day?

A single Coal Seam Gas well in the Surat Basin can extract between 400,000 litres (0.4ML) of water and 800,000 litres (0.8ML) of water per day, over a period of six months to a few years, during the initial phase of depressurising the coal seam aquifer. Once the coal has been de-watered and de-pressurised, allowing the gas to flow from the coal seam into the extraction pipes, around 100,000 L (0.1ML) of water is still required to be extracted from the coal seam per day.

How much produced water does one coal seam gas well average per year?

For an average production life of 15 years, each well has the potential to extract an average of approximately 150,000 litres of water per day (0.15ML) from the coal seam.  Due to water continually re-entering the coal seam from pressurised aquifers above and below, water extraction is required for the life of the well.

This means that over the life of every CSG well, an average of approximately 55,000,000 litres (55 ML) of water per year could be removed from our underground aquifers that would have otherwise pressurised the Great Artesian Basin and the Surat Basin, allowing water to seep from the ground and spring feed the Murray Darling Basin further down the system.

There was a guesstimated 6800 production wells, as well as 500 exploration and testing wells within the Surat Cumulative Management Area at the end of 2018. It is also projected that by 2035 there could be as many as 21000 production wells within the Surat Cumulative Management Area.

Olympic sized swimming pool hold approximately 2.5 ML of water.

Sydney Harbour holds approximately 500,000 ML of water

Supporting evidence:

Gas Today, Australia, May 2009

According to Origin Energy Senior Engineer Water Management, Robert Caine, by-product water on an individual well can vary between 0.1 mega-litres per day (ML/d) and 0.8 ML/d  (that = 100,000L to 800,000L per day).

Waterlines Report, Australian Government - National Water Commission, 2011

The actual production rates and times within and between coal measures vary considerably. From their CSG production experience in the Surat Basin, Queensland Gas Company Pty Ltd (QGC) indicated that initial water quantities extracted from a well ranged from 0.4ML/d (400,000L/d) to 0.8 ML/day (800,000L/d) before decreasing to about 0.1 ML/day (100,000L/d) over a period of six months to a few years (Environmental Resources Management 2009).

Underground Water Impact Report for the Surat Cumulative Management Area - May 2019

As at late 2018, approximately 10,000 P&G wells within the Surat CMA are recorded in the Queensland Government Mineral and Energy Resources Location and Information Network database (MERLIN). Since the status of a well is dynamic and subject to change, however, the information on bore type, subtype and status provided and stored in DNRME databases may not always be current.  

To account for potential status changes, OGIA runs further verification of the location, depth, purpose and status of these wells, based on up-to-date geological information and groundwater extraction records. This process suggests that an estimated 6,800 CSG wells in the Surat CMA are either producing gas or have been completed as production wells. Of these, 84% are in the Surat Basin and the rest are in the southern Bowen Basin. There are also an additional 500 wells outside CSG production areas for exploration or testing purposes.

There has been a sharp rise in the completion of CSG wells from 2012 onward, with about 1,000 to 1,500 wells completed annually. This trend is expected to continue until about 2023. Based on the current development profile, OGIA estimates that if all production areas are developed as currently planned, an estimated 21,000 CSG wells will be completed by the end of 2050.