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Coal may be left under city water
Matthew Warren, The Australian
UP to $31billion worth of coal buried under Sydney’s catchment area may never be extracted unless it can be mined without disrupting the city’s future water supply.
While the Sydney Catchment Authority yesterday stopped short of proposing a moratorium on mining, it recommended a tougher approval process.
…Some underground mining in the southern coalfields has caused significant environmental damage to pristine rivers and creeks in the region.
Sections of rivers and creeks have drained into large cracks and subsidence has been caused by operations hundreds of metres underground.
(15 August 2007)
Bury CO2 in sea bed off Sydney
Andrew Trounson, The Australian
SCIENTISTS may soon start probing the ocean floor 40km off Sydney for suitable geological sites to bury carbon dioxide emissions from NSW coal power stations.
This follows a parliamentary committee recommendation that the Government ramp up research funding for the controversial process.
It also recommended the federal government fund a large scale demonstration project that would likely cost over $1 billion. Such a move would anger green groups that argue the money would be better spent promoting existing renewable energies such as wind and solar power.
But the committee concluded that while so-called carbon capture sequestration, or CCS, wasn’t the “magic bullet” for cutting global emissions, the prevalence of fossil fuels globally, and Australia’s economic dependence on coal, meant it “must be seriously considered”.
(14 August 2007)
Gas storage plan may go cold
Barry Fitzgerald , The Age (Melbourne)
EXXONMOBIL has again raised doubts over the future availability of hydrocarbon reservoirs in Bass Strait for the storage of greenhouse gases.
The US giant’s Esso subsidiary has revealed that apart from extending the life of the current oil and gas fields to more than 20 years and 30 years respectively, it was now launching a study into the untested gas potential of geological structures deep beneath the existing fields.
It is both depleted fields and the deeper untapped structures in Bass Strait that the planned $5 billion Monash Energy coal-to-liquids project in the Latrobe Valley, a joint venture between Shell and Anglo American, plans to use for carbon storage.
The Monash project plans to turn brown coal into gas for further conversion into 60,000 barrels a year of synthetic diesel. A key element of the project is the separation of a concentrated stream of carbon dioxide for geosequestration. Without carbon capture and storage (CCS), the greenhouse gas emissions would be at unacceptable levels.
(13 August 2007)
Contributor Stuart McCarthy writes:
Bass Strait is shaping up as a microcosm for the emerging confluence of ‘supply side’ peak oil and climate change mitigation strategies. It’s a pity that the ‘demand side’ of the equation continues to attract so little attention in the mainstream media.
