The submissions include text copied (and unreferenced) from a United States study of the American shale gas industry, with the words “coal seam gas”? substituted for the words “shale gas”?. The study that this group has drawn its material from actually makes no mention of CSG or the Australian industry.
Two parliamentary inquiries have been misled and this brings into question the integrity and credibility of those responsible.
In a 16 September 2011 press release, Lock the Gate President Drew Hutton said he doesn’t want to see the community “hoodwinked by phoney claims”?. The natural gas industry agrees.
Lock the Gate submissions to both the Federal Senate inquiry into the management of the Murray Darling Basin and the New South Wales Legislative Council CSG inquiry purport to include information sourced from a Cornell University study into greenhouse gas emissions from shale gas.
Meanwhile, QGC will examine claims by the protest group that it is operating an unsafe pipeline.
QGC Senior Vice President Jim Knudsen said that Lock the Gate has made the claim on the basis of “˜hearsay’ to the Queensland Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation.
The group claims a QGC manager had said the company was operating a pipeline that had a wall thickness outside specification.
“We take safety seriously at all of our facilities and have a maintenance and assurance process in place to identify these sorts of concerns but nonetheless have advised the department that we will cooperate fully with the regulator,”? Mr Knudsen said.