Farmers shouldn’t feel threatened when it comes to Santos’ coal seam gas plans, the company’s boss Peter Mitchley told a NSW Farmers meeting in Narrabri last Thursday.
Mr Mitchley was invited to speak to the NSW Farmers Narrabri district council and answer questions about Santos’ Narrabri Gas Project.
“The last thing you should feel is threatened,” Mr Mitchley told the group of around 20 gathered at The Crossroads Hotel.
“Last week’s agreement means you can say yes or no. If you don’t want Santos on your land, please say no.”
The agreement to which Mr Mitchley referred was the Principles of Land Access, signed at NSW Parliament House by Santos, AGL, NSW Farmers, Cotton Australia and the NSW Irrigators Council.
The deal means landholders can decide whether or not they want drilling operations on their land.
NSW Farmers president Fiona Simson, who was in Narrabri for last Thursday’s meeting, commended Santos for signing the agreement.
“We’re very pleased Santos and AGL have put in writing what they’ve been saying for some time now,” Ms Simson said.
But one farmer raised concerns that the agreement doesn’t prevent Santos from building a pipeline on landholders’ properties to carry gas from its project to other parts of the state.
“Santos can still plan a pipeline through someone else’s land,” he said.
Mr Mitchley confirmed the agreement did not cover such a pipeline, but said a similar underground pipeline at Santos’ GLNG project in Queensland was built without passing through properties where landholders objected.
He said he hoped to repeat that here.
“I have to connect gas to the NSW market, I have to build a pipe somewhere, it will have to go from A to B,” Mr Mitchley said.
“We will route the underground pipe as best we can for people who don’t want it.”
Among other issues discussed at the meeting were the drought, native vegetation reform and the new Local Land Services (LLS), which Ms Simson described as a “train wreck”.
“The LLS is now on the ground. It’s been a very tortuous process,” she said.
“While we thought a new model would be good, we weren’t in favour of re-enrolling and we thought we could still use existing LHPA roles.
“There were a number of positions put forward on behalf of members which would have been less painful.”
But she added that local boards have processes in place which will make them accountable and be required to consult widely.
Concerns were also raised about the NSW Government’s lack of action on native vegetation reform.
“The government has a mandate to provide this,” said Ms Simson.
“We’ve had very little movement in this space, the government should be able to do it this term.”
And while the region received welcome rainfall a fortnight ago, farmers at the meeting were encouraged to still keep the issue of the drought high on the radar.
“Rain is welcome, rain is great, but we do need to keep talking about the drought and the government response, so we don’t have a situation again where there is drought without government policy” said Ms
Simson. “We ended up in a drought space with no state government or federal government policy.
“In Queensland the agricultural minister stood up and said ‘this is terrible, we’re immediately going back to our policy position we had before’ so everyone knew where they were at.
“In NSW we couldn’t get the government to budge on drought declarations. It became a very political process and was very badly handled in our state.
“The frustration at not knowing contributed to angst.”