Reforms to coexistence management between Queensland’s coal seam gas (CSG) industry and agricultural landholders have been welcomed by industry proponents, but concerns have been raised by farmers particularly around past malpractice.
Queensland’s parliament has introduced legislation that creates a framework to assess and manage the impact of CSG-induced subsidence on agricultural land, as well as providing a pathway for landholders to be compensated. If passed, it will expand the remit of the Office of Groundwater Impact Assessment (OGIA) in relation to CSG induced subsidence, and expand the role of the Land Access Ombudsman (LAO) to support stakeholders through an alternative dispute resolution pathway.
Subsidence is the gradual sinking of land when groundwater is extracted from aquifers to allow for gas production. The new legislation also gives a wider remit to GasFields Commission Queensland, to be renamed Coexistence Queensland, which will provide information, engagement and education services to the community and industry on land access and coexistence issues across the resources and renewable energy sectors.
QLD Minister for Resources and Critical Minerals Scott Stewart said the reforms were the result of lengthy consultation across the resource and agricultural sectors and regional Queensland communities.
Stewart said: “The reforms we’re introducing will enhance our coexistence framework for emerging industries like critical minerals and renewable energy and ensure that it meets the challenges posed by coal seam gas-induced subsidence.”
Along with the coexistence reforms, the legislation will improve processes for assessing and administering resource authorities and reduce the state’s financial risk from resource companies failing to comply with their environmental or rehabilitation obligations. The GasFields Commission last year completed a review of CSG-induced subsidence and six of its recommendations informed the proposed reforms.
Warwick Squire, its Chief Executive Officer, said it was fitting to expand the organisation’s remit to address coexistence matters across the state’s broader resources and renewable energy sectors given the industry’s growth.
He said: “The energy landscape is rapidly transforming, which brings about the emergence of new coexistence challenges and opportunities. The commission’s experience as an independent organisation makes us well placed to assist industry and communities to navigate challenges and harness opportunities.”
Analysis by law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth noted that a substantial portion of the bill related to introducing a regime that would determine whether agricultural land – including land outside the area of a petroleum tenure – had or may be affected by subsidence caused by coal seam gas drilling.
It added: “In many respects, the existing regime under chapter three of the Water Act relating to managing the impacts of resource activities on water bores will be replicated.” In May, a Queensland parliamentary committee heard concerns about the legislation and that it would favour the surety of CSGoperations over farming.
Submissions consisted of a broader role for the OGIA that included an accurate map of farmland topography with baseline data gathered with funding from the CSG industry, as well as farmers highlighting their lack of agency when dealing with CSG companies and contractors that have access to off-tenure land not covered by m existing agreements.
Zena Ronnfeldt, whose family runs a farm at Kupunn, west of Dalby, noted in her submission that a deficiency of the bill was the unreasonable unfettered access it granted gas miners for all land in the subsidence management area, both inside and particularlyoutside their authorised tenure areas.
She said: “This bill does not extend landholder protection tortious liability to off-tenure landholders, risking our ability to obtain insurance.”
A technical study conducted by the QLD government in 2022 acknowledged for the first time that CSG-induced subsidence could have potential consequences for farming practices in the Darling Downs, a step up from its previous stance that subsidence would simply occur as a result of drilling. That year, Arrow Energy was fined $1 million for breaching land access rules, with Ronnfeldt the first to discover the company had drilled diagonally beneath her land without notification or approval.
She said the government report used averages from a large dataset and would not pick up the irregular patches of subsidence that were happening over time, including on her property.
Ronnfeldt said: “It’s impacting our land because it is not uniform – averages mean nothing when you’re out there in the paddock on a machine that’s become bogged while trying to conduct farming operations.”
Notably, the government’s report found that more than 700 water bores would be affected by CSG mining, up from 459 in 2016. In a 2022 paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland, University of Queensland Associate Professor Peter Dart pointed out that many landholders were concerned about the effects of the rapidly-developing CSG industry on ground water and agricultural resources, as well as the weakness of official oversight.
Prof Dart said: “Gas and water extraction is now extending under some of the most productive agricultural lands in Australia, the Darling Downs, [and] uncertainties remain as to the impacts of gas activities on aquifers.
“The water extracted along with the gas is often salty, and the method of disposing of the salts is a contentious, unresolved issue. “The power imbalance between industry and landholders and weak regulation of industry hinders efforts by the industry to obtaina social licence.”
He explained that extracting gas and water from coal seams left depressurised zones, which lead to subsidence of the earth layers above the seam and leakage of aquifers into the coal seams with deleterious consequences for agricultural production.
He added: “The dispersed, unclear regulation across multiple agencies of the interaction between the gas industry and landholders has created significant confusion and led to a loss of social licence of the gas industry in the areas it operates.”
