Swiss mining firm Glencore has been on the offensive over its controversial plans to attempt to inject carbon dioxide into a bit of the Nice Artesian Basin (GAB) – one of many world’s greatest underground water sources and a lifeblood for farmers and regional cities.
Later this month, the Queensland authorities is anticipated to resolve if it can enable Glencore’s pilot carbon storage venture to go forward.
Glencore’s proposal has introduced collectively uncommon bedfellows in livid opposition to the plans – from farming and conservation teams to billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart’s agriculture enterprise and One Nation and the Greens.
Queensland agricultural physique AgForce is operating a marketing campaign towards the plans, saying they’ll put the the GAB in danger, and has gone to court docket to attempt to drive the federal authorities to totally assess the venture underneath nationwide atmosphere legal guidelines (the choice to not assess the venture was made by the earlier Coalition authorities).
Within the Senate, the Greens and the Coalition voted in favour of a One Nation-backed Senate inquiry into the plans. Queensland’s premier, Steven Miles, reportedly stated on Wednesday he didn’t anticipate the venture to move the state’s environmental check.
What’s occurring right here?
Let’s begin with what’s being proposed.
Glencore’s CTSCo venture needs to inject about 110,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year for 3 years into an aquifer referred to as the Precipice Sandstone, which is greater than two kilometres under floor in southern Queensland.
The liquified CO2 will likely be trucked 260km from the Millmerran coal energy station the place there’s a proposed trial to seize some CO2 from the plant.
However Glencore says any emissions reductions from the venture are “incidental”.
Relatively, the intention of the venture is, in response to Glencore paperwork, to judge the “feasibility of future large-scale [greenhouse gas] stream storage inside the Surat Basin”. Glencore has stated the venture is a “first step” in direction of a “massive CO2 storage hub in Queensland appropriate for a number of industrial customers,” and has acknowledged it could have to undergo a contemporary approvals course of.
However how large might a future venture be, in contrast with the 330,000 tonnes it needs to retailer for this trial?
The corporate wrote final month in its finalised environmental impression assertion that the Precipice Sandstone aquifer might retailer between 183m tonnes and 730m tonnes of carbon dioxide, “indicating its potential for a protected and cost-effective everlasting CO2 storage at potential future industrial scale”.
That means a venture that, by way of CO2 injection, could be between 560 and a couple of,200 instances bigger than the trial.
Glencore stated in an announcement: “The numbers you may have quoted are storage capability estimations solely and don’t have any direct relationship to any future storage tasks.”
Independently backed?
Glencore and its supporters have stated repeatedly the venture “has been reviewed by knowledgeable third-party establishments, together with the Australian Authorities Impartial Professional Scientific Committee (IESC), the Workplace of Groundwater Impression Evaluation (OGIA) and CSIRO who concluded that the impacts could be native and minor.”
Solely a type of three named evaluations – from the IESC – are publicly accessible, however Temperature Verify has obtained copies of the opposite two.
The IESC did say impacts had been “anticipated to be minimal and manageable in each the rapid and long run” as a result of the trial was small.
However the report additionally contained a number of criticisms. For instance, the committee wrote it was “not doable to make sure of the adequacy of the regional groundwater and plume migration fashions” due to a scarcity of documentation.
Elsewhere the committee stated the anticipated adjustments to the acidity of the groundwater from including the CO2 might result in “mobilisation of metals” that might “restrict the longer term usability of the groundwater”.
The CSIRO evaluation recognized a number of main points with Glencore’s environmental evaluation, at one level saying “a key weak spot of the EIS [environmental impact statement] is that dangers will not be recognized and offered in a structured method”.
The evaluation additionally stated: “The restricted sensitivity and uncertainty evaluation imply that potential impacts on water customers within the Precipice Sandstone aquifer as a result of new groundwater extraction close to the GHG stream injection nicely can’t be dominated out.”
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Temperature Verify requested CSIRO if Glencore’s abstract of its evaluation was truthful. A spokesperson stated: “Our report will likely be made publicly accessible when the Queensland authorities publishes its evaluation report on the venture. We anticipate this to be in direction of the tip of Might. We will likely be joyful to debate our report particulars and the nuances of our findings after this.”
Ned Hamer, an impartial hydrogeologist who has seemed intimately at Glencore’s plans, has learn the three experiences and stated “none of those events had been in a position to ‘conclude’ something because of the insufficient impression evaluation and significantly severely poor modelling undertaken by CTSCo up to now”.
In an announcement, Glencore claimed “all of the knowledgeable reviewer issues have now been addressed and proposals adopted and included within the closing EIS” and so its description of “native and minor” was applicable.
In a earlier response to Agforce’s case within the federal court docket, Glencore has stated it could welcome a listening to, the place “deceptive rhetoric will likely be proven for what it’s and measured towards Glencore’s intensive scientific proof”.
Rinehart’s Hancock Agriculture wrote in a Senate submission that its investigation discovered the dangers of the venture to agriculture had been unacceptable “not simply to our personal operations, however extra broadly, together with long-term water provides and feedlot safety”. It wrote that the plan needs to be blocked.
Non-potable?
Glencore has additionally claimed the aquifer “comprises non-potable water with fluoride ranges six instances above the protected consuming degree and isn’t utilized by any agricultural producer inside a 50km radius.”
However Hamer stated: “It’s good high quality inventory water and various native councils could be very joyful to have this high quality of water accessible for city consuming the place it could be amended or handled.
“Poorer high quality GAB groundwater is used for a lot of city consuming provides. The water generally requires modification or therapy which isn’t overly restrictive given the high-value use.”
He stated it was widespread for GAB water to have fluoride ranges above consuming tips however “the intensive expertise of farmers within the GAB is that elevated fluoride ranges in water don’t have an effect on animal well being”.
Rejection a ‘loss of life knell’ for CCS?
Within the Australian, one Glencore spokesperson stated if the venture was refused it could be the “loss of life knell for any future onshore CCS tasks in Australia”.
However the motive so many teams are involved about Glencore’s venture is just not as a result of it’s “onshore” however as a result of it’s concentrating on an aquifer that’s a part of the Nice Artesian Basin. In accordance with Hamer, CTSCo is the one venture on the earth proposing to retailer CO2 in a water useful resource.
Carbon seize and storage analysis group CO2CRC, funded by trade and authorities, tracks present and proposed CCS tasks across the nation. Their newest map of 18 CCS tasks (just one is working) reveals Glencore’s is the one one to focus on a Nice Artesian Basin aquifer.
There are two different CCS tasks within the southern Queensland and northern South Australia area.
One is Santos’s Moomba venture, which is underneath development and is anticipating to retailer CO2 in former oil and fuel reservoirs.
One other is from oil firm Bridgeport, which has proposed injecting 960,000 tonnes of CO2 into certainly one of their depleted oilfields in order to push out an additional 6.4m barrels of oil.
