Allowing fossil fuel companies to extract gas from beneath the Lake Eyre basin would “blow out of the water” the Queensland government’s emission targets and make it more difficult for Australia to comply with its international obligations, a new report says.
Origin Energy was given approval by the state government to begin exploration for gas on leases in the basin in late December.
If allowed to proceed the application could open up the region – home to one of the last major free-flowing desert river systems – to the extraction of fossil fuels across 225,000 hectares of Queensland’s channel country.
Though the licences only allow for exploration, the Queensland academic Ian Lowe examined the potential emissions that would be created if the basin were opened up to production and found that it would derail the state government’s plan to lower emissions.
His analysis modelled the emissions created over two scenarios: a high-activity scenario where the gas is produced for export and a low-activity scenario where only minimal work takes place.
Under the former, Lowe found gas extraction in the area would generate 199m tonnes of CO2-equivalent a year, while in the latter activity would produce 16m tonnes of CO2-equivalent a year.
This is because the gas resource has an unusually high concentration of CO2, ranging from 30% to 35%. Because of this, a large amount of CO2 would be released during the process of extracting the gas – even before it was processed, shipped and burned.
“I’d not come across anything like that level of CO2 in other gas fields,” Lowe said. “Even if there wasn’t a leakage of methane and even if the gas was burnt somewhere else so that it didn’t count against Australia’s emissions targets, there’d be a significant release associated with getting the gas out of the ground.”
Under the high-activity scenario, Lowe said, extraction and export of gas from the basin would soak up a significant portion of Australia’s national carbon budget and “require a 60% reduction just to stay where we are, let alone moving towards zero”.
This would make it more difficult for Australia to satisfy its international agreements under the Paris agreement.
But even under the low-activity scenario, Lowe found the yearly emissions created required would amount to half the yearly reduction under the state government’s 2030 emissions reduction target.
“The conclusion I came to is even a modest extraction of gas, would blow out of the water Queensland’s stated emissions target,” Lowe said.
Under its plan to reach net zero by 2050, the government is aiming for a 30% emissions reduction below 2005 levels by 2030.
A government spokesperson insisted its emissions targets “are achievable” and said it was working with industry to “investigate ways to reduce fugitive emissions from resource activities, particularly in the Bowen Basin”.
“The channel country leases were required to be issued under previous legislation and are for exploration only – they are not for the production of petroleum or gas,” the spokesperson said.
“Any on ground exploration activities would require an Environmental Authority from the Department of Environment and Science, and an approval under the Regional Planning Interests Act, subject to stringent assessment criteria.”
The state government “expects industry to reduce emissions, including fugitive emissions” and “more consultation will be done” before permission was granted to Origin to develop its field.
Origin was contacted for comment.
The International Energy Agency suggested in May that limiting global heating to 1.5C, a goal set out in the Paris agreement, meant the exploration and exploitation of new fossil fuel basins had to stop in 2021.
Ellie Smith, a spokesperson for Lock the Gate Alliance Queensland, which commissioned the report, said it showed the responsibility of meeting the 2030 emissions target was being left to other sectors of the economy.
This was because “at the moment in Queensland we have no direct regulation of emissions”, Smith said.
“It feels like the fossil fuel industry pushing to get as much gas out of the ground in the dying days of the industry. They know, we all know, it’s the end of the fossil fuel industry.
“It’s clear they’re just trying to push and push and push on every front, whether it’s just Queensland, Northern Territory, WA, New South Wales – there’s new development everywhere.”