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The Generator news service publishes articles on sustainable development, agriculture and energy as well as observations on current affairs. The news service is used on the weekly radio show, The Generator, as well as by a number of monthly and quarterly magazines. A podcast of the Generator news is also available.
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  • Counting the cost of drilling down deep

     

    The BP-operated well continues to leak up to 4.5 million litres a day. The World Conservation Union and WWF are also calling for a global halt on deep-sea operations.

    The latest federal government exploration releases confirm a trend towards deep-sea drilling, offering explorers blocks largely around the 1000-metre mark.

    This means that just to reach the point on the sea floor where drilling starts, a floating rig must drop its steel drill string through ocean three times deeper than the Centrepoint Tower is high.

    Industry insiders say drilling at such depths is far more costly, technically challenging and harder to fix in an accident, such as Deepwater Horizon. But with the Montara oil spill inquiry due to report next week, the government plans changes to offshore rig work, moving to untangle red tape and establish a single national regulator.

    Deepwater Horizon was drilling down past 1500 metres of water when gas raced unchecked to the surface and ignited a firestorm that killed 11 crew and sank the rig. Repeated attempts by the charterer BP to halt the worst oil spill in US history have failed.

    Up to eight rigs of the same semi-submersible type as Deepwater Horizon are exploring for oil and gas in Australian waters, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

    Among them is the Chevron-chartered Atwood Eagle, working in 1387 metre-deep waters off North-West Cape – short of what Geoscience Australia says is the nation’s record working water depth of 1501 metres. The sophisticated rigs operate by dynamic-positioning. Despite their massive size, they use engines to ”hover” over a well site, the way a helicopter hovers over a landing pad.

    Mark Randolph, of the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems, finds such feats of engineering ”mind-boggling”.

    But Professor Randolph cautions: ”The world is hungry for oil, the challenge is to go deeper, and every so often technology needs to catch up. There is no doubt Deepwater Horizon is going to make the world pause.”

    A former BP deep water explorer, Greg Bourne, now chief executive of WWF Australia, said the cost pressures of this type of drilling meant the locations had to be highly prospective.

    ”The problem is if you screw up in a highly productive rock formation, the consequential flow is automatically very large.” Mr Bourne said the remoteness of Australian offshore fields from any oil industry centre made an accident likely to be even more damaging. ”A dynamically-positioned rig would take several months even to get it to Australia before it could begin drilling a relief well. An immediate moratorium on deep water drilling now would be straight logic.”

    Last August, when the West Atlas rig blew out in only 77 metres of water in the Timor Sea off Western Australia’s Kimberley Coast, it still took 75 days to plug the Montara oil well.

    Evidence to the Montara inquiry has revealed some breakdowns in regulation, and the Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson, said he was already predisposed to setting up a new national offshore petroleum regulatory authority. ”I think there are potential existing weaknesses at the moment through the designated authorities, and some of the powers that rest with the states,” Mr Ferguson said.

    But he rejected a call for a ban on drilling at depth in the newly released acreages. He said the government already required comprehensive environmental assessments of all offshore drilling work.

     

  • Ban on coal-fired power plants in NSW

     

    However, Treasury officials said a ban could push electricity prices even higher for consumers already hit with a 13 per cent price rise on July 1 as much-needed new energy would have to come from more costly sources.

    It is also likely to add fuel to the fire over the proposed federal super profits tax with the coal industry expected to claim it was being unfairly punished in NSW by such a policy.

    There are also fears that any restrictions on coal-fired plants could derail plans to privatise the retail sector of the NSW electricity industry.

    The current bidders will be given access to the state’s “data room” from July 1 to assess the value of the sale already estimated to be less than $8 billion. Any restrictions on building new coal-fired power plants could devalue the sale even further.

    A Cabinet minute prepared by the Climate Change Department for Environment Minister Frank Sartor and Energy Minister Paul Lynch outlines options for the Government’s clean energy strategy that is expected to form a major plank of the Government’s green election agenda

    Mr Sartor said last night: “The NSW Government’s policy is to be fuel neutral in relation to any new power generation.

    “It is appropriate that the Government reviews all potential options for future power generation.

    “Development of these policies is ongoing and this matter is yet to be considered by Cabinet.”

  • Mining tax a factor in axed 4,5 bn Hunter projects

     

    The projects could have created up to 20,000 new jobs.

    Hunter Business Chamber CEO Peter Shinnick says it is disastrous.

    “They’re going to maintain their current plant but eventually they will close,” he said.

    “This is tragic news for the Hunter.”

    The Australian Aluminium Council’s Executive Director, Miles Prosser is worried future investment will be forced offshore.

    “Imposing costs on Australian producers that aren’t imposed on producers elsewhere in the world basically puts us at a disadvantage and that potentially compromises future investment,” he said.

    Mr Prosser says exemptions are needed to ensure the aluminium sector survives.

     

  • Surge in support puts Greens in the box seat

     

    Significantly, another 8 per cent said they would support someone other than the major parties or the Greens. Together with the Green vote, this effectively meant that a staggering one in four respondents supported neither government nor Coalition.

    Rudd had no choice, really, but to hope aloud that many of those people were merely parking their votes until election day. But it’s wishful thinking. Half those who currently support someone “other” may return – or drift – to Labor.

    But the Green vote is probably a different story.

    Greens leader Bob Brown and his confidants are taking a conservative view of Tuesday’s poll result, effectively building a 3 per cent negative margin of error into what they assume to be their true level of support. But even with a vote of 12 or 13 per cent, Brown’s Greens will easily win the balance of Senate power and maybe a seat or two in the House of Representatives.

    There are many reasons for the sudden surge in support for the Greens which – according to the party’s own research – has happened across Australia, in both the cities and the country. Not least, of course, is the sense that Rudd-Labor has failed to fulfil election promises on a range of issues (you know them) and that Tony Abbott is not a trustworthy, viable alternative at this stage.

    There may also be a weariness with what third-way parties like to call the “old politics” of adversarialism, whereby two (almost invariably) blokes bang it out amid a cacophony of unedifying yelling and abuse over the issues of the day.

    There has long been distaste in Westminster-style democracies for gladiator-style politics. And occasionally a third centrist party emerges to capitalise on that distaste.

    For many years the Australian Democrats filled that gap. That party’s genesis rested with disaffected Liberalism. It largely used its balance of Senate power status judiciously, undertaking good-faith negotiations with governments and all the while bolstering its reputation as a centrist third political force.

    In June 1998, however, support for the Democrats began to steadily wane. That was the point at which the party, under the leadership of Meg Lees, supported John Howard’s goods and services tax.

    From then until its eventual demise exactly a decade later, the Democrats were cast as Liberal-aligned. They ceased to be a credible third force. The Greens have largely stepped into that gap.

    In the past three years they have broadened their base dramatically, capturing the moderates left behind by the Democrats while keeping their traditional core supporters. Along the way they have garnered support from major party voters who feel abandoned on environmental issues such as climate change.

    Unlike the Democrats, however, the Greens are not political centrists.

    They emerged from the activism of the extreme Labor Socialist Left. The party’s soul remains there, although its parliamentary wing, as represented by Brown and his four fellow senators, is far more moderate and politically pragmatic.

    The Greens, not the Labor Party under Rudd, are the true ideological bete noire of Australia’s political right and the reactionary commentariat, such is the very minimal distinction between the Labor and Liberal mainstreams on core social, economic, environmental, security and immigration policies. The real reason Coalition politicians so despise Rudd is because he apes them so effectively, while espousing the Labor brand. In Brown, they see a true ideological opponent.

    But consider this: some on the extreme left of the Greens view Brown as an unpalatable moderate, for the very reason that he engages with representative politics at all and, worse, for his willingness to negotiate on government legislation. This illustrates, perhaps, the crossroads at which the Greens find themselves as their base broadens to include more traditionally conservative voters.

    But Brown has always been an astute political juggler. After the Rudd government (foolishly, in my view) made it clear from the outset that it would not negotiate with the “radical” Greens to win passage of its emissions trading scheme, Brown opposed it on the grounds that its reduction target was not sufficiently ambitious. Labor largely blamed the Liberals for the impasse.

    The Greens, however, have supported other critical government measures, including the economic stimulus packages. They will also support the mining tax, if or when it reaches the Senate.

    Brown turns 66 later this year. He has four years of his current term left and may seek another six years. All the while he is nurturing a range of talented, ostensibly presentable and politically astute individuals in various parliaments, to make way for his eventual succession.

    As the election approaches, the Liberals will tell you that Rudd is an untrustworthy policy flip-flopper. Labor will tell you Abbott is an erratic, economic illiterate; a man who’d prefer to run marathons than engage with the hard work of government.

    You can be assured that both will highlight what they see as the danger of the radical Greens, especially on issues such as illicit drugs and forestry management.

    Now, back to the poll we began with.

    When Rudd challenged for leadership in late 2006, the ALP figures who orchestrated the change focused heavily on Labor’s low primary vote under Kim Beazley.

    One of those who was most instrumental in the anti-Beazley push constantly insisted that Labor should have been sitting on a primary vote of 43 to 45 per cent.

    Back then, Labor’s primary vote under Beazley was 37 per cent. Today, under Rudd, it is 35 per cent according to Newspoll, translating to a two-party result of 51 per cent for Labor. Anyone who says this is not seriously threatening to Labor – and Rudd personally – is deluded.

    It’s a result predicated on the flow of Greens preferences at the last election, which were largely allocated to Labor.

    This time Brown will urge voters to make up their own minds on preference.

    A small variation in Green preference allocation could, therefore, have a dire consequence for Rudd Labor.

    Source: The Sun-Herald

  • Major parties vote against Hunter & Lithgow health study

    Media Release – 10 June 2010

    Major parties vote against Hunter & Lithgow coal health study

    Greens MP and health spokesperson Lee Rhiannon said the major parties’
    vote yesterday against her motion in NSW Parliament calling for a
    comprehensive population health study to investigate the links between
    the Hunter and Lithgow region’s coal and power industries and poor
    health outcomes exhibited a lack of real commitment to the issue
    (extract from motion below).

    “In the face of compelling evidence that the health of residents in the
    Hunter and Lithgow regions is suffering, the opposition and government
    joined forces to vote down the Greens motion calling for an independent
    population health study and better monitoring and enforcement measures,”
    Ms Rhiannon said.

    “The failure of the Keneally government to allocate funding in this
    week’s budget to the study suggests it is not committed to finding
    answers.

    “If a study finds evidence of a link between the coal and power
    industries and ill-health the government could be liable and would be
    forced to reassess its existing firm relationship with these polluting
    industries, ” Ms Rhiannon said.

    Motion voted down by the major parties in the NSW Upper House

    3. That this House calls on the Government to:

    (a) restore its faith with the Upper Hunter community by agreeing to
    design and undertake a comprehensive independent population health study
    to assess the impact of coalmining and coal-fired power stations on the
    health of residents in the Hunter region, and any impact on the local
    water supply and food chain,

    (b) extend NSW Health’s investigation of the link between the coal
    and power industries in the Upper Hunter and poor health outcomes to the
    Greater Lithgow Area,

    (c) ensure adequate air quality monitoring networks in the Upper Hunter
    and Greater Lithgow areas, that can measure particles to 2.5 microns,
    and can test and analyse the composition and toxic properties of dust
    pollution in these regions,

    (d) make the findings of the health study and all pollution monitoring
    and any pollution testing data readily available to the public in an
    accessible format via the internet, and

    (e) establish permanent and well resourced EPA offices in the Upper
    Hunter and Lithgow regions to investigate and monitor coal mining and
    coal-fired power related pollution.

  • Land sale puts Gunns’ trees in firing line

     

    Gunns has previously told the stock exchange that it plans to use the timber from the plantations to ensure its Tamar Valley pulp mill is 100 per cent plantation based.

    But Pulp and paper analyst Robert Eastment says Great Southern’s receivers will consider the possible sale of land and trees.

    “If that is the case then the management of the trees, or the responsible entity with Gunns, may or may not go with that so there’s a degree of uncertainty at this stage,” he said.

    A Gunns spokesman says the matter is up to Great Southern investors.

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