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Category: Mining Industry / Oil and Gas

WA Government reform fails to grant landholders fracking veto right

Thursday, 17 Mar 2016 14:30:21 | Sarah Taillier

The WA Government will not give landholders the right to veto fracking plans in Western Australia. (ABC News Josh Marshall-Clarke)

Western Australian landholders negotiating with oil and gas companies will not be given the power to veto fracking projects, despite recommendations to government to do so.

The WA Government has today announced it will adopt 10 of 12 recommendations made to them in November by an Upper House parliamentary committee and designed to beef up the regulation of the state's growing onshore oil and gas industry.

The committee spent two years conducting a public inquiry into the implications of fracking, the practice used to extract onshore shale gas.

The recommendations include increased fines for oil and gas companies that commit offences.

The State Government argued a voluntary land access agreement that was brokered by the petroleum industry and agricultural groups in 2015 already existed, and hence did not need to be made compulsory.

But the WA National's Member for Moore Shane Love said the agreement must be mandated to "give it real teeth".

The State Government has also rejected a recommendation to form a statutory body to act as an independent arbiter for land owners and resource companies in land access negotiations.

A large portion of Mr Love's electorate, from Gingin north to Greenough, is considered highly valuable for oil and gas development.

'Suspicion' of government agencies' ties to industry

Mr Love said he supported the committee's call for an independent arbiter, which would be similar to the Queensland GasFields Commission.

"Fundamentally, what I find in the electorate is there's suspicion about the role of some of the government agencies who are both promoters of the industry and the regulators of the industry," he said.

"People don't feel a degree of trust in that arrangement.

"So this is about finding a body that people will trust to be there on the ground working with the communities and the landowners and the companies, to keep a good relationship between all."

Mr Love said the Nationals had been speaking with the Minister for Mines and Petroleum, Bill Marmion, about strengthening landholder's rights and he believed they were making headway.

"I thought this report might have been the place where he could have put those measures in place, but he's chosen not to do so," he said.

But he said the National Party had moved to distance themselves from the State Government's official response.

Mr Marmion's office has been contacted for comment.

The State Government has supported a call to prohibit the addition of types of chemicals, including benzene, being used in the fracking process.

Conservation Council WA director Piers Verstegen said the report and the Government's response "papers over most of the problems".

He said countries around the world were banning gas fracking and that WA's regulatory and policy arrangements on the practice were "completely wrong" and "out of step with the sentiments of the communities that would be host to these kinds of activities".

External Link: Fracking recommendations WA

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