Tag Archives: leaking methane gas

Fracking the Northern Territory

It seems our government is not able to think beyond the immediate future, unable to consider the generations ahead as some of our earlier, more far sighted leaders achieved, with projects like the Snowy Mountains scheme and the delivery of  pipeline water from Perth to Kalgoorlie.

So now they have actively encouraged the removable of the moratorium on gas fracking in the Northern Territory  – an epitome of greedy short sightedness and unconcern for the irreparable damage  to the environment which it will deliver.

Four years ago I wrote this about fracking :-

FRACKING – A GOOD IDEA?

Fracking is being promoted as the new saviour of the US economy and also in Britain and here in Australia. It can provide cheap and plentiful energy right on our doorstep. In the US, which is leading the search for shale gas, the price has now dropped to 1/3rd of the price in Britain, enabling industry to produce cheaper products and bring jobs back that had been lost offshore.

Fracking is new technology which makes it possible to collect gas previously locked away in shale rocks, by pumping into them a mixture of water and chemicals at very high pressure, fracturing the shale and releasing the natural gas they hold. Huge reserves of this new energy are thus available in our nations, but putting aside this further use of carbon fuels, is it a good idea?

In a program on SBS Sunday night, entitled  ‘Fracking: the New Energy Rush’, Professor Iain Stewart found a disturbing lack of transparency about the dangers of fracking to the populations living near to the gas wells throughout the US.

While it was apparent that many people with private water wells and bores now found their water fizzy with methane gas which had come from the fractured rocks, it was not clear how that gas had reached the surface. Was the water 17 times higher in gas content than normal because of leaking pipes, faulty well construction or just plain bad practice?

Many people he visited, no longer drank from their wells, had resorted to buying bottled water, and even animals would not drink the water, though he found no evidence of the chemicals used reaching the surface.

He did find people who were sick, who believed it was caused by the gas companies fracking nearby, though many who had been compensated by the gas companies were not allowed to talk about it, as part of their compensation agreement. Apparently the chemicals used are so secret that only the doctors of those who are ill, are allowed to know what they are, and then only under strict confidentiality.

That in itself is deeply worrying, for why the secrecy, unless they are harmful, but the big problem is, what lies ahead, twenty or thirty years down the road when the gas is gone, but the chemicals remain, and the already leaking pipes corrode and allow them to reach the surface, or even the deep aquifers which provide drinking water for nearby populations.

We have no right to thoughtlessly pollute the future, in our greed for quick financial gain. There is an old saying “Live your life as if you would die tomorrow. Farm your land as if you would live forever”! That coincides with the probable origin of the thought, which we find in Genesis 2:15, ‘The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it……’”   NIV.

This time the humungous quantities of water, chemicals and acid that will be pumped into the ground of the Northern Territory  will result in thousands of wells and holding dams for the polluted waste water which includes carcinogens, neurotoxins and reproductive toxins.

The pristine waterways and aquifers  will be polluted by monsoonal floods, common so far North in Australia, in ways which cannot be put right by man – ever! Four years ago I warned that God will not ignore such wilful damage.

Since then, the curses God promised in the Bible for the disobedient have begun to fall upon us, including terrorism and the growing threat from the North. It will get worse, and result in our land being taken from us, until our population is decimated. We will have deserved it because we have ignored God’s words and rejected His commands. Only those who actually change their ways and begin to obey His commands will survive to see Christ’s return and the world restored to Eden-like conditions.