THE Coal Seam Gas industry will only achieve successful and sustainable coexistence with landholders if it treats them with respect, Gasfields Commission chair John Cotter warned the APPEA conference this week.
"Respect, trust and communication are the foundation stones of this industry's social licence to operate and ultimately its future," Mr Cotter told the gathering.
"Three simple words - yet as many of you at this conference today can readily attest, achieving them often seems far more allusive and challenging," he said.
"Last week in Dalby, I was sitting at the kitchen table of a landholder who had concluded negotiations with a gas company. While they had reached a fair and amicable agreement, in reflecting on their experience they told me that the negotiation process had been extremely stressful and exhausting. The wife told me that in the end she had argued with her husband to sign 'the damn thing' before it killed him.
"When I hear those sorts of things, as I still do far too frequently, I get disappointed, but I also get determined that we all need to do better.
"The onshore gas industry often likes to quote the 3800 landholder agreements signed in Queensland to date, as a sign of progress on coexistence. It's important, but coexistence is not simply a statistic.
"As a commission we have been more interested in the nature and quality of those agreements as a truer measure of sustainable coexistence."
Mr Cotter said with the onshore gas industry providing more than 95 percent of domestic gas needs across South East Queensland, he was "amazed" private polling showed a large majority of consumers had "little empathy, understanding or trust of the onshore gas industry".
"The onshore gas industry has been described as a complex and highly technical industry - and highlights the urgent need for the science and research efforts to be more effectively directed and more clearly communicated in a manner that helps builds confidence and enables issues to be considered on the facts, not on fear and emotion.
"It's not about trying to change people's minds, but giving them the credible information to help them make up their own minds about the integrity and sustainability of the energy industry."
