Gorgon gas field

Photo credit: abc.net.au

The Gorgon gas project is going ahead: it’s a billion-dollar gas mine, drilled into the North-West sea floor, with the product pumped to Barrow Island (a Class-A nature reserve) so it can be compressed to a liquid and exported.

Barrow Island is like Australia’s version of the Galapagos islands. It’s home to 15 mammals, 7 marine mammals, 110 bird species, 54 species of reptile and 1 species of frog. 25 of these animals, including the burrowing bettong (also known as the boodie) and the Barrow Island euro, are unique to the island.

Wilma at O2WA linked to a rather good article, Gorgon: 20 burning questions last week. It gives quite a lot of useful facts about the project, but I think it raises even more questions.

• Why did the project go ahead even though the Environmental Protection Agency opposed the project on the basis that it’ll destroy the habits of endangered species and introduce exotic species to a Class-A nature reserve?
• Why is it so important to sell off our natural, non-renewable resources for the profit of foreign CEOs and shareholders?
• What’s the environmental impact of all the fly-in, fly-out workers?
• Why must the processing plants be built on a Class-A nature reserve instead of on the mainland where they won’t do as much damage? Given that Chrevron alone is spending $43 billion on the project, would it have hurt to spend a little extra to pump the gas a bit further?
• Why are they claiming that it’ll be low-impact mining based on the fact that they’ll be pumping a third of the CO2 emissions they’ll create under the ground of a Class-A nature reserve? Geosequestration is still experimental technology – can’t they experiment somewhere less fragile?
• Why were the corporate deals completed before the environmental approval was given?

It’s like Chevron is determined not just to have the gas but to cause as much damage as possible – every decision they’ve made is environmental vandalism. Apparently our state and federal politicians have dollar signs in their eyes, and no thought for our unique home.

I sincerely hope that there’s more to Western Australia’s future than merely being a quarry, but I’m not seeing any evidence that this is going to happen. Given the weak response to the recent oil spill up north which affects tens of thousands of animals and is one of Australia’s top 3 worst oil spills, I don’t have much faith in the environmental responsibility of the fossil fuel industry.