Premiere Barnett will be left looking like a shag on one of the three new rocky outcrops, discovered recently in the Browse Basin, if he believes this will reopen the door to developing Browse LNG onshore at James Price Point.
The tide has gone out on this ship wreak and he will be stranded high and dry.
The option for floating has been agreed to by the Commonwealth and favoured by the Woodside consortium and Broome community.
James Price Point was found to be too expensive before and the new maritime boundary changes nothing.
Though the WA state could now own up to 2/3 of the Browse gas field the Premiere needs to use this new win fall to push for greater state revenues and ensure the Browse project goes ahead with full environmental protections the National Heritage of the West Kimberley.

Published in Broome Advertiser 28th May 2014

30th Jan 2014 Unpublished

Many environmental groups, along with community groups are appealing the EPA Buru Mitsubishi decision and the Australian Conservation Foundation are supporting this call.

Given the huge potential for damage to the Kimberley environment, this should obviously be given a full and transparent environmental assessment. ACF believe that the EPA is the only agency in WA who has the capacity to do rigorous, unbiased, independent environmental assessments. As Federal environmental powers are handed to the States it’s then inconceivable that the State’s environmental watch dog deputises the Department of Mines and Petroleum, a conflicted organisation whose remit is precisely to advance gas fracking in WA, to carry out monitoring and regulating Buru’s environmental impacts on the Kimberley.

I was one of several people who attended Buru’s less than convincing public forum. I heard a lot of concern from the public about the possible environmental effects of fracking in Broome’s supply of drinking water as well as the pristine Kimberley its groundwater and its National Heritage listed rivers and Roebuck bay. For Buru Energy community affairs general manager Jon Ford to say “People were particularly interested in hearing how we will protect water resources and how the well integrity will be maintained” is ambiguous at best.

Buru’s public presentation had many pretty pictures of big bores reinforced with layers of steel and concrete but as any engineer knows; steel rusts and concrete cracks and the two together aren’t necessarily a good mix.
Even in Buru’s world’s best practice they can’t eliminate human error in bore construction or closure.

Mr Ford was also quite misleading when he was quoted “France wants to protect its nuclear energy industry” as a reason to ban fracking. Rather France is heading for a low-carbon future and is considering a tax on carbon emissions and a nuclear tax. The revenue is to go to renewables and energy efficiency standards. President Francois Hollande has said France won’t allow exploration of shale gas even as the country seeks to reduce its reliance on nuclear.

A Duke University study refutes Mr Fords claim “There have been no instances of franking causing water contamination “when it recently showed that groundwater methane pollution in sample shale gas fields is around 600% above baseline, while a study by one of the world’s foremost authorities on fracking – Cornell University Professor of Engineering Anthony Ingraffea – has showed that well failure rates in Pennsylvania are around 6-7% within the first year of operation, creating pathways for hydrocarbon pollution of groundwater. Such well failures increase over time as steel rusts and cement corrodes; the risk of water pollution increases over time.

Due to the huge public concern, the open questions and because of, environmentally, what’s at stake; It’s not too much to ask for our State Environmental agency to assess this proposal is it? And if all is as squeaky clean as Buru and Mitsubishi would have us believe then they wouldn’t stand in its way.

Posted by: Wade Freeman, November 18, 2013

It’s time Western Australia’s premier leaves his dream of industrialising the Kimberley behind.

WA premier, Colin Barnett would be well advised to take the advice of W.C. Fields, who once said, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.”

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it

Premier Colin Barnett announced this week that the state government has compulsorily acquired the 3414 hectare site at James Price Point. It seems the premier is determined to further his dream to industrialise the Kimberley despite the odds stacked against him.

He is pushing ahead despite Woodside walking away from constructing the world’s largest LNG processing plant smack-bang in the middle of the pristine Kimberley coastline in favour of a less environmentally damaging offshore floating option.

Premier Barnett also promised $30 million (mostly earmarked for Indigenous housing) to the Traditional Owners of this country, with the funds to be held in a trust, while the Jabirr-Jabirr and Goolarabooloo Peoples claims are determined.

But make no mistake, this land grab cannot be said to have the agreement of Traditional Owners. It is compulsory acquisition, pure and simple.

But make no mistake, this land grab cannot be said to have the agreement of Traditional Owners. It is compulsory acquisition, pure and simple

Indigenous leader Mick Dodson has said, “I think compulsorily acquisition is, in a sense, another act of colonialism. It’s another theft of our land, it’s another invasion and it should never ever be contemplated at a political level.”

Here are four sound reasons why the dream of industrialising the Kimberley coastline should finally be left behind:

The original agreement was for a plant to process gas from the Browse Basin. Since Woodside has decided to process the Browse gas on a floating platform, there is no need for an onshore processing plant;
The strategic assessment agreement between the state and federal governments was based on Woodside wanting to process gas from the Browse Basin onshore – that is now null and void;
The WA supreme court has rejected all environmental approvals for the area due to conflict of interest under the state’s EPA;
None of the concerns about the damage an industrial site would do to endangered bilby colonies, threatened monsoon vine thickets, migratory whale calving grounds or the National Heritage listed dinosaur tracks have been addressed.
By pursuing a divisive land grab, with no talk of how the area will be protected, Premier Barnett is looking increasingly like the lone ranger of the Kimberley, unable to accept reality and forging on with a misguided course.

It looks like the government is determined to turn James Price Point into an industrial precinct to service the mass development of the National Heritage listed West Kimberley region.

Hundreds of exploration licences have already been issued for the Kimberley region. These include licences to explore for gas on the Dampier Peninsula, bauxite on the Mitchell Plateau, coal in the Canning Basin, and uranium, shale gas, iron ore, copper, lead and zinc elsewhere in the Kimberley.

While Woodside is currently rehabilitating the damage it has already done to James Price Point, the state government has moved to put it under threat once again.

So, Woodside Petroleum, the township of Broome and the whole nation have moved on. It’s time for the Premier and the state government to do the same

This piece was first published in the West Australian.

Posted by: Wade Freeman, February 3, 2014

The Environmental Protection Authority is missing in action, says ACF’s Kimberley project officer, Wade Freeman

In 2011 the West Kimberley was declared a National Heritage area by then Federal environment minister Tony Burke, who — accompanied by representatives of the local Aboriginal corporation the Kimberley Land Council, national environment groups and many local people — took part in a ceremony at One Arm Point on the northern tip of the West Kimberley.

Just two years on from that long overdue recognition of the internationally significant natural and cultural values of the Kimberley region, it is staggering to learn that the region is now under threat from a whole new upstream environmental predator on its door step — the process known as fracking. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of drilling then injecting fluid into the ground at high pressure, to fracture gas-bearing rocks to release natural gas.

During this process, methane gas and toxic chemicals can leak from wells and contaminate nearby groundwater. In the US, there have been more than 1000 documented cases of water contamination near areas of gas drilling. The resulting pollution can result in sensory, respiratory and neurological damage when people ingest the contaminated water.

WA Environment Minister Albert Jacob is facing the decision of whether to allow open slather gas fracking in the Kimberley — before any proper independent environmental assessments have been done. Recently, the Environmental Protection Authority refused to assess a major fracking project for the Kimberley proposed by Buru Energy and Mitsubishi. The EPA gave no good reason for its failure to assess.

Rather, as has become familiar, the agency palmed off its responsibilities to the Department of Mines and Petroleum — an agency as conflicted as its name suggests. There seems to be little chance the department — which has a mandate to facilitate the development of the mining industry — will do the work required to ensure Kimberley groundwater is protected, or that the legitimate concerns of local people are taken into account. The EPA, on the other hand, was set up precisely to provide objective, transparent, independent advice to ministers on environmental issues.

The projects in the Kimberley are likely to be massive — Buru’s project is the first step in a series likely to involve many thousands of wells and networks of pipelines and roads cutting through the landscape from the Fitzroy River to Broome’s Roebuck Bay, well into the Pilbara and almost to the Northern Territory border. The government seems to want to lock WA into that future without any transparent debate or independent assessment of environmental and health risks. It is vitally important that Mr Jacob uses his powers to send Buru and Mitsubishi’s project back to the EPA for assessment.

The government seems to want to lock WA into that future without any transparent debate or independent assessment of environmental and health risks

The Yawuru people are the holders of native title over the area Buru and Mitsubishi are targeting. The Yawuru recently wrote an excellent submission to the Government that outlines clearly the reasons Mr Jacob shouldn’t allow this project to go ahead. The Yawuru people oppose fracking on Yawuru country until they can be satisfied that it doesn’t pose a risk.

Even if the WA government wants a fracking future for the Kimberley, it must recognise that the WA public has the right to expect credible processes to be followed. The WA and federal governments know the public is deeply concerned about fracking. The practice has many vigorous opponents — including senior ministers of Tony Abbott’s coalition Government — and with good reason.

Fracking has a deeply fraught history in the US. Study after study has linked fracking with water contamination and other, often irreversible environmental consequences. The US EPA has been sufficiently concerned by the potential for damage to groundwater quality that it is conducting an extensive study into potential threats to water quality from shale and “tight gas” mining.

Meanwhile, a study by Duke University in the US recently showed groundwater methane pollution in sample shale gas fields is about 600 per cent above baseline, while a study by one of the world’s foremost authorities on fracking — Cornell University Professor of Engineering Anthony Ingraffea — showed well failure rates in Pennsylvania were about 6-7 per cent within the first year of operation, creating pathways for hydrocarbon to pollute groundwater. As steel rusts and cement corrodes, the risk of water pollution increases. WA needs to slow things down until the EPA has done independent, credible, transparent research into the risks — at a landscape scale — that fracking poses to the environment and to human health.

Such studies need to happen as a matter of urgency before we blindly give the go-ahead to an environmentally degraded future for one of our most cherished and iconic regions, the Kimberley.

This piece was originally published in the West Australian newspaper

By Wade Freeman, 11 June 2012

In case you missed it with all the drama unfolding in Canberra over the past 12 months, one of the world’s most untouched and iconic regions was granted National Heritage protection last August.

Australia’s beautiful Kimberley, which stretches all the way from Broome, north up around the Buccaneer Archipelago, and east as far as the NT border – was declared of great national significance due to its cultural and environmental values to the nation.

It was an achievement of international significance that Tony Burke, Federal Minister for Environment, Sustainability, Water, Population and Communities, now considers one of the proudest moments of his political career. But what many Australians don’t realise is that despite the National Heritage listing, parts of the Kimberley today remain under grave threat from rampant industrialisation.

The once peaceful and idyllic township of Broome has turned into something of a war zone in recent months as tensions come to a head surrounding a proposed liquefied natural gas development at James Price Point, 60 kilometres north of Broome. The development would turn the red sands of the Dampier Peninsula into the Dubai of the south and Broome itself into a fly-in fly-out mining mecca.

In what may well come to be the defining environmental protest movement of this generation – just as the Franklin was in the 1980s – people all over the country are raising their voices against the possible destruction of one of Australia’s last relatively untouched natural wonderlands.

The Australian Conservation Foundation recently presented Minister Burke with close to 25,000 postcards signed by Body Shop customers calling on him to stop the industrialisation of the Kimberley before it’s too late – indicative of the extent of mainstream opposition to the prospect.

However, over the past weeks, the WA Premier Colin Barnett has sent hundreds of police to the once placid town to protect the interests of the mining company Woodside, and ensure they can carry out their work without interference from peaceful protesters. One protest camp has been dismantled and another, set up by old families of Broome, remains in a state of tenuous resistance.

Is this the way we conduct business in Australia in 2012? The WA Premier has effectively sent his own army to Broome at a cost of over $1 million to Australian tax payers in order to protect the interests of one of our largest mining companies.

The scale of the proposed development is immense – $30 billion, 3,000 hectares of industrial land to be put aside, a 6km-long breakwater, and greenhouse gas pollution that is likely to double existing West Australian pollution and add 5 per cent to Australia’s greenhouse pollution levels.

The coastline in question is also dotted with the world’s longest chain of dinosaur footprints that would be broken by the proposed development. The fossilized footprints of 15 different dinosaur species run for 80 kilometres along the Kimberley coast around Broome. According to University of Queensland palaeontologist Steve Salisbury, who has surveyed the coastline, the dinosaur trail would inevitably be destroyed.

We fear that the proposed gas hub at James Price Point will be the thin edge of the wedge for further development that will threaten the recognised environmental values of the region. What’s being proposed would be Australia’s largest gas refinery, and it would also be the foot in the door for the wider industrialisation of the Kimberley.

Besides the proposed gas hub at James Price Point, mines as diverse as coal, oil, bauxite and uranium are all on the drawing board, posing a major threat to the Kimberley. The Kimberley is one of the world’s last great wilderness areas, but it’s currently covered in more than 700 mining tenements.

We have argued, along with many other environment groups, Broome residents, the Deputy Mayor of Broome Ann Poelina, leading Australian Businessman Geoff Cousins and many others – not that the gas extraction at Browse Basin should be shelved but that the gas should instead be piped to a more appropriate location such as the already industrialised Pilbara region.

The Australian Conservation Foundation believes that some places are too precious to lose – and the Kimberley certainly ranks as one of those places.

Wade Freeman is the Australian Conservation Foundations Kimberley Project Officer.
First Published http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4063574.html

By Wade Freeman – posted Wednesday, 11 April 2012

Remember the film The Castle? The Kerrigan family’s idyllic suburban lifestyle is threatened when a property developer compulsorily acquires their property. Well, a long way from the suburbs of Melbourne, on the spectacular red coastline of the Kimberley in WA, a similar process is taking place right now. Only this one is fact, not celluloid fiction.

There was little fanfare or public comment when W.A Premier Colin Barnett recently re-issued ‘Notices of Intention’ to take on lands between Quandong and James Price Point, 60km north of Broome, despite the land being located on the pristine and National Heritage listed Kimberley coastline. This major legal event passed quietly on 12th March 2012.

It may be the key underpinning the transfer of lands from Indigenous Traditional Owners to Woodside Petroleum.

First the back-story. Last December the W.A. government’s prior ‘compulsory acquisition’ notices on the lands around James Price Point were ruled invalid as they did not properly describe the area of land the State Government wanted to acquire. As it currently stands, even with new compulsory acquisition notice, the proposed gas hub at James Price Point is on shaky ground at best.

There is still no formal sign off from the State or Federal governments. The W.A. Environmental Protection Agency has delayed the release of their environmental assessment, and the final investment decision from chief proponent Woodside has been delayed to possibly mid 2013. Buyers for the gas are still not committed. On site ground works and surveys are well behind schedule and the opposition in the local town of Broome is growing louder.

On top of this Woodside is selling down its share in the Browse Basin project and the joint venture partners in the project are not committed to the James Prices Point location but would favor piping south to the Pilbara to existing gas processing facilities.

Despite all this and seemingly against all commonsense, Premier Colin Barnett is pushing ahead with the proposed location at James Price point. Premier Barnett has ignored advice from Commercial Barrister Michael Orlov who represented Traditional Owners Philip and Joseph Roe and Neil McKenzie.

Following the Supreme Court challenge that ruled out the original compulsory acquisition notices on the 6th December 2011, Mr Orlov explained the complications for the Barnett Government affecting the negotiation process and the agreement struck with Traditional Owners.

The States agreement with the Traditional Owners needed to be premised on the W.A. State Government having the valid compulsory acquisition notices to commence negotiations on an agreement to use the James Prices Point site.

As this case has illustrated, the State had no legal compulsory notices and as such no legal standing, no procedural rights and no right to negotiate, according to Barrister Orlov. The action of the Supreme Court in ruling the notices invalid meant it is as if they never existed.

Tenure security and an agreement of Traditional Owners is also required before a final investment decision can be taken by Woodside and the joint venture partners and now the existing agreement is potentially open to legal challenge.

It means the agreements the W.A. Government has struck with the Kimberley Land Council on behalf of the Traditional Owners are now in question. The decision puts the future of the entire Browse gas project in doubt.

The proposed development at James Price Point would be the 2nd largest LNG processing facility in the world, 2nd only to Qatar. Currently the North West Shelf puts out over 16 million tonnes of gas per annum, Woodside initially plans to ship out around 12 million tons and expand to approximately 25 million tonnes per annum. This is to be a multi user hub; the unnamed partners will bring the total to approximately 50 million tonnes a year.

It would add 39 million tonnes of Green House Gas emissions per annum; 5 per cent of Australia’s national total. Thirty billion liters of waste water would be released in to humpback whale, snub nosed dolphin, turtle and dugong habitat and this would wash down to Cable Beach with any oil spill in one to ten days.

It’s clear the public is not getting the full picture on the real extent and impacts of this Greenfield project on a pristine Kimberley coastline.

The W.A. Government should desist from attempting to advance this major industrial development using 1950’s style colonial strong-arm tactics such as compulsory acquisition legislation, and instead be open to a thorough debate about more appropriate sites from the gas to be processed.

The Australian Conservation Foundation and the Broome community are opposed to the construction of the LNG processing hub at James Price Point on strong environmental grounds and support the option to pipe the gas to the Pilbara.

First Published http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13480

By Wade Freeman – posted Monday, 18 March 2013

There has been enough written about the cyclical history of developing the north and the northern food bowl, motivated by knee jerk responses to the ‘yellow peril’ threat from Asia, as well as the ‘use it or lose it’ legacy of the past colonial era.

The Kimberley is Australia’s last pristine area and was recently recognised as National Heritage. It is not a dumping zone for politicians’ pet development projects or a quarry for the mining oligarchy. Such splendid visions of Australia’s new northern agricultural frontier are a regular feature in election years despite the repeated failed attempts to turn these grand visions into an economically viable reality.

The recent release of the “Developing Northern Australia, A 2030 Vision, Discussion Paper” was quickly followed by Tony Abbott’s doorstop assurance in February: “You can absolutely take for granted the fact that we will have infrastructure proposals for northern Australia, we will have water storage proposals for northern Australia, and we will have deregulatory proposals for northern Australia”.

This harks back to WA Premier Colin Barnett’s 2004 State election promise to build a Kimberley to Perth pipeline if elected. Thanks to some quick-thinking bean counters and design engineers this particular dream was shown to be deeply flawed, and is often cited as the main reason he lost that state election.

Now, as the self-proclaimed fiscally prudent Coalition see the finishing line of a Federal election, the big nation building projects come out again. Governments (through taxpayer funds) are suddenly leading the free market and building the infrastructure for private investors. It has taken over 50 years and $517 million in public funding the get the Ord River scheme to the point were we can lease stage II to an International company on the proviso they further develop it over the next 50 years.

What Abbott’s new vision – and most others to date – has not taken into account is the predicted impact of climate change on northern Australia, its ecosystems and agricultural potential. The predicted effects of climate change on the Kimberley are already happening.

According to recent CSIRO and BOM estimates, over the next 50 years predicted climate impacts on the Kimberley include: more unpredictable and intense rainfall events; saltwater getting into some freshwater supplies (groundwater and coastal); stronger and more destructive tropical cyclones; an increase in very hot days; more common and severe droughts and floods, and the increased occurrence of wildfires.

A comprehensive “Northern Australia Land & Water Taskforce” report, released in 2010, confirmed that while northern Australia has some areas with soil suitable for agriculture, there is not enough rain to make up for the mostly very hot dry conditions throughout the year. Shorter more intense wet seasons will mean if you want to water the northern Australia food bowl of Asia you will need larger, more expensive dams than those currently built to catch powerful river floods.

Changing rain patterns will create more demand on water storage facilities. Moreover, dams and infrastructure will need to be larger again as the evaporation rates increase in hotter, longer dry seasons. More intense rainfall events are likely to erode topsoils from farm lands unless greater soil erosion controls are developed and put in place.

In 2013, the heat waves and fires experienced in the south contributed to the late arrival of the northern monsoon. This provides a useful test case for how the intensifying of the northern rainfall patterns will be likely to play out and the ramifications for the rest of Australia. Another key issue pointed to in a recent report from Nature Journal, but not factored into Abbott’s grand vision for the north, is heat stress and its impact on outdoor work productivity. One of the regions singled out in the study was northern Australia.

The Nature study suggests that in the last decade rising temperature and humidity have reduced strenuous labour by 10 per cent in hotter months and could be as high as 20 per cent by 2050. Farm workers, construction labourers and the military will be amongst the sectors most exposed to the hotter, more humid conditions. So if your one of these lucky southerners who, on the promise of a tax break, find yourself on a bit of broad acreage battling monsoonal rain while trying to hold down your top soil – just remember you probably have to do it under lights at night.

Still some pollies plough ahead with the northern frontier dreams, blind to future climate impacts, and defiantly ignoring the compounding environmental issues. Northern Australia can have a strong economic future, but it will not come from inappropriate large scale agricultural development that will be hugely susceptible to climate change.

It must also put the region’s traditional owners at the forefront. Northern Australia’s rich biodiversity is world renowned and its indigenous people maintain strong cultural and ecological knowledge that is an asset to the area. These should be the basis for sustainable economic development in the region.

A strong economic and conservation future for Northern Australia’s future rests in the cultural conservation economies that are well suited to the region, such as tourism, carbon trading and land management. Indigenous land use activities have sustained the northern ecology for thousands of years and need more recognition in the “mainstream” or “real economies” as we develop hybrid traditional and contemporary economic models and ecologically sustainable communities.

First Published

By Wade Freeman – posted Friday, 12 April 2013

The fight to oppose the development of the Kimberley coastline has spread all the way from the red sands of James Price Point to capture the attention of the whole nation.

Like the Franklin Dam or the Tasmanian Forest campaigns before it – the battle to save the Kimberley has come to define a new generation of Australian environmental activists, many of whom have taken the opportunity to visit the Kimberley, get the red dirt on their feet, and will now feel personally connected to it for life.

But unlike the Franklin and Tassie forests, at James Price Point the commercial realities in the corporate boardrooms may be the thing that hammers the final nail in the coffin rather than grassroots political pressure.

The project has not only lost its social license but it is also caught in the centre of a radically changing oil and gas sector – meaning that the fiscal realities of a floating offshore option (FLNG), combined with the opportunity to short circuit a damaging international activist backlash – are shifting corporate heads away from the Premier’s dream of a gas factory on the Kimberley coastline.

The loss of social licence was recently reflected in the WA State election where Premier Barnett’s Kimberley candidate suffered a primary vote swing of -0.3%, while the state average was an 8% swing towards the government. The Greens recorded a positive swing of 10% despite a state-wide swing against them of almost -3%. The depth of feeling in Broome around the No Gas campaign was clearly the wild card.

With Japan developing a futures market in LNG similar to oil, a locked in price contract will be a thing of the past Buyers will be looking for the cheapest possible prices, further driving down the cost of LNG in what is already looking like an over supplied market. Post-Fukushima Japan is growing as one of the region’s major buyers of Australia’s LNG.

Despite Mr Barnett’s huge expenditure of political capital in the proposed development, the time has now arrived for the Premier to gracefully concede he is on the wrong side of commercial fundamentals. Woodside’s final investment decision into the Premier’s preferred site is still not fully costed, just as the final environmental approval still sits with Federal Minister Tony Burke and all development cost invoices are not yet in.

Burke has already requested Woodside and the State to go back and do more work on the National Heritage-listed dinosaur track ways as well as the endangered greater bilbies. This will create more costs and uncertainty for the project and the potential for more work requested to satisfy the minister will cause only more delay and costs.

In the meantime, the resource sector has become over crowded. The Inpex Browse project piping LNG 885km to Darwin is now in the construction phase, as is the Shell’s Prelude project. In a tight international LNG market these projects will be several years ahead on the proposed Woodside development.

This moment of truth may come as soon as April 24 when Woodside holds its AGM in Perth. We already know that Woodside’s investment partners Shell prefer the FLNG option, and several investor trips that the Australian Conservation Foundation has held into the Kimberley over the past two years have yielded the same message – investors have already moved on from James Price Point.

Colin Barnett may have acquired enough goodwill within the mining and political sector in WA to have been afforded a dignified silence on the issue during the recent election campaign. But if he is unable to let up now and accept that the bulk of investors have already moved on – his dogged determination of building one of the worlds biggest gas hubs at James Price Point in the Kimberley could become the defining failure of his time as Premier.

First published http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14897