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The LNG invasion on Curtis Island
Liquefied Natural Gas – the big boys are coming to town!
The race is on to deliver Australia's first LNG from coal seam gas (CSG) and it's happening from the Port of Gladstone. In such a depressed global economy, any industry that boosts the state’s royalties and employment prospects is sure to be hailed loud and long, irrespective of any environmental inconveniences.
There are some hefty players in this LNG game – the big American guns, ConocoPhillips, will collaborate with Origin Energy to deliver a mammoth $35 billion project and a supposed 1000 permanent jobs. But currently leading the race in Gladstone are Santos in partnership with Petronas. Their smaller project will cost a modest $7.7 billion and export LNG to the Asian markets of Japan, Korea and Taiwan. The British‐owned BG Group and partner QGC, will join forces to build a similar sized liquefaction plant also on Curtis Island. They will export to Singapore and other markets with first production expected in late 2013. Shell and Arrow Energy also plan to combine forces to liquefy CSG for export to the Asia‐Pacific region including China and India. That’s a total of four facilities just on Curtis Island. There are a further 2‐3 companies with LNG plans for the Gladstone area.
The hidden costs
Once the CSG is chilled to ‐162◦C, it will leave the city as a liquid, carried in huge cryogenic tankers up to 300 metres in length. It is reasonable to expect, given the current scale of planning, that there will be at least ten of these monsters plying the waters of Gladstone Harbour each week. They will command 'right of way' as they muscle through the passage and manoeuvre in the swing basin amongst dugongs and turtles. Of course, that is after GPC dredge and deepen the harbour and dump the material on vibrant seagrass beds and a known fish hatchery ‐inside Rodd's Bay Dugong Protection Sanctuary. There’s also the matter of the bridge from Friend Point to Laird Point that will forever link Curtis island to the mainland ‐ an extremely valuable piece of infrastructure for future developers and a cash‐strapped state government, no matter what their protestations are at present.
But wait there’s more. Each of the four LNG companies will excavate a separate gas pipeline to run 1.5km along the harbour floor to Curtis Island. The most likely method will be trench and back fill, rather than using the more‐costly HDD method that has a reduced subtidal disturbance footprint.
Sure, the economy needs the money, our workers need the jobs, the world needs a transition energy that’s not coal. But LNG cannot compete with cheap coal in the domestic market, so the big dollars come from exporting it overseas ‐ Queenslanders miss out on the benefits of using this new‐found form of cleaner energy and are locked in to burning coal instead.
The big picture
Gladstone's airshed is already full and its ocean views include coal stockpiles. A power station and many other industrial landmarks welcome visitors to its city. And no matter what the 'experts' say, LNG is still derived from a fossil fuel, a non‐renewable source. Its drilling and extraction processes are degrading and unsustainable – more holes will be needed, more land will be given up.
Granted, generating energy from CSG emits 40% of the CO2 produced by that of dirty coal. But the problem is that to transport the gas cost‐effectively, it must be turned into a liquid ‐ LNG. This liquefaction process and the its regasification (back to a usable gas at the other end) uses high amounts of energy and produces significant greenhouse gas emissions. Transporting it also produces high amounts of greenhouse gas and that's something these LNG companies don't talk a lot about.
But at the end of the day the obvious question for Gladstone and its addiction to industry is quite simple ‐ when will enough be enough?