Inspired by the anti-CSG and anti-coal Lock The Gate Movement, Coal Free Wide Bay Burnett spokeswoman Vicki Perrin said residents of Baffle Creek were “alarmed” to hear of a new exploration permit being sought in the Baffle Creek catchment by Blackall Oil.
The little-known Blackall is expected to be awarded EPM 25838, about 37km southeast of Miriam Vale this week.
The 210sq.km block still needs to complete native title approvals once granted, and any exploration is expected to be limited to shallow drilling to assess the presence and continuity of kerogen-bearing formations.
According to the Bundaberg-based News Mail residents are also worried about plans to mine oil shale in the Lowmead/Baffle catchment area.
Perrin told the paper that she was concerned to learn that Greenvale Energy was proposing an oil-shale mine in the Lowmead/Baffle catchment area.
Perrin is concerned about the “disaster” that could arrive if Blackall or Greenvale are successful in developing oil shale resources around the Baffle Creek catchment.
But Greenvale, which recently had its Alpha tenement [MDL 330] renewed by the Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines until 2017, says it has no immediate plans to develop Lowmead.
Greenvale has held licences for decades around Lowmead.
It says Alpha, which is smaller and which is richer in kerogen than Lowmead or its Nagoorin deposit, is a better option for conversion of the shale rock into liquids, possibly for the processing of nickel.
Alpha is 500km west of Rockhampton.
Lowmead sits within the 23sq.km MDL 188 and is 75km southeast of Gladstone, and has 670 million barrels (3C) of potential.
The deposit is owned 50:50 by Greenvale and US-based Queensland Energy Resources.
QER is the only company in Australia to convert kerogen ore into liquids at its trial plant at Gladstone.
Queensland maintains an effective moratorium on kerogen oil projects, imposed by former premier Anna Bligh in 2008.
Campbell Newman lifted the moratorium in 2013 after a four-year study by the government, but enacted a policy that requires all projects to demonstrate their technology will meet high environmental standards and community expectations.
Projects will be assessed case-by-case.
QER’s demonstration plant was making about 35 barrels per day of raw diesel at a cost in excess of $US100 per barrel.
The industry developed a bad reputation during the Southern Pacific Petroleum era, with more than 1000 complaints lodged against that company, QER’s ancestor.
QER’s Paraho II demonstration plant has operated since 2011 without a single complaint being made.
SPP’s Stuart shale project operated between 2000 and 2003, when the company went into administration.
The US-backed QER purchased the project for $40 million and the old facility was dismantled. It used the Alberta Taciuk Process, producing some 1.5MMbbl in its day.
The ATP process was criticised by green groups who said the plant was a significant source of highly toxic dioxins that risked locals’ health and the Great Barrier Reef.
There were also high levels of greenhouse gas emissions and odour issues.
Kerogen oil, previously known as oil shale, is created by heating up a sedimentary rock to create a synthetic crude oil.
Queensland has around 90% of Australia’s known oil shale resources, which are equivalent to some 22 billion bbl of oil.
Perrin has called on the Queensland government to “prohibit oil-shale, coal and gas mining in the only remaining pristine waterway in the state”
"The Wide Bay, Burnett and Fraser Coast should not be turned into an industrial wasteland as we have witnessed on the coast in Gladstone and inland at Chinchilla/Hopelands," Perrin told the newspaper.
She needn’t worry, especially with the price of oil at $US50.
Any oil shale project in Queensland is years, if not decades, away.
