The Queensland Farmers Federation recently made a submission to the Office of Groundwater Impact Assessment (OGIA) regarding the draft Underground Water Impact Report for the Surat Cumulative Management Area (UWIR Report), released in March.
QFF welcomed the release of the draft report and acknowledged the continued efforts by OGIA to model and report on the ground water impacts associated with the exploration for, and production of, petroleum and gas.
In its submission, QFF requested the deletion of all statements making comparison of the CSG water extraction impacts as a percentage of irrigator’s entitlements granted under a water resource plan. The comparison of the CSG impact as a percentage of ‘irrigators take’ is misleading and fails to acknowledge that irrigators have an entitlement under a water resource plan, while the mineral and petroleum industry do not. Furthermore, irrigators have voluntarily reduced their usage in an effort to correct any over allocation of the water resource.
QFF also noted that the UWIR report referenced the contraction of planned CSG developments, with the 2016 report modelling less than 18,000 gas wells, including a noted reduction from 2012 projections of the Long-term Affected Areas. However, Departmental estimates from 2014/early 2015 predicted 30,000-40,000 total wells by 2025, averaging 400-500 new wells per year per company. QFF noted that none of the existing tenures have been surrendered and the area granted for petroleum has remained steady at 31 million hectares. QFF has therefore requested that the 2016 report includes modelling for the cumulative ground water impacts associated with 40,000 gas wells across the existing tenure areas.
QFF also welcomed the recognition within the report that there may be local effects resulting from poor construction or abandonment of CSG bores and wells; and that there will be continued assessment of the potential effects of abandoned or poorly constructed CSG wells using uncertainty analysis techniques.