This year, I've been looking at what's behind the explosion in disposable plastics, and as you have heard on earlier episodes, nearly everywhere I looked, I found fracking.
And the plastics fracking connection has even reached Australia, where the government called its strategy to respond to the pandemic a gas fired recovery.
Oh hello, what's that? We have an Australian reporter.
Now, yes, you've been asking for it.
And now we're digging into the oil and gas industry down Under. And when I say we, I mean you, Lindall Rollins, Welcome to drills.
Thank you so much, Amy, I'm so excited to be here. And so as I was saying, Australia's recovery from the pandemic is fired by gas.
Fossil feed stock is all of your modern life. You want to live a modern life, you need a fossil feed stock. You can't get calmon any other way. If you want a chemistry lesson, I'll help you at the back.
That's Andrew Laveres, the former CEO of Dow Chemicals, the world's second biggest maker of plastic waste. Lavers was born and raised in Darwin in the Northern Territory. He's gone on to advise US presidents, including Obama and Trump. More recently, Lavers was back home in Australia during the pandemic and in his spare time, became a strategic advisor to Australian
Prime Minister Scott Morrison's National COVID nineteen Coordination Commission. Lavers joined the Commission's Manufacturing Task Force and they quickly put out a report titled creating a Competitive Domestic Gas Market.
That's what terrific At the moment, we have got blastering winds, we are surrounded by.
A red sky, choking dust and slike.
That is just one of countless dramatic stories to come out of this bush fire season which is raging on with no relief in sight.
The report came out in May twenty twenty this month that the devastating fires that had been burning in Australia since June the previous year, eleven months in total, burnt out. Here's Lavers on Australian National television earlier this year, echoing some of the talking points Amy has been reporting on this season around gas. Their feedstock. Laveris keeps talking about is the byproduct from fracking that gets used to make plastics.
The National COVID Commission work we did was for manufacturing, okay. It wasn't for electricity, It wasn't for doing the power balance or any of that. The work we did was totally based on using the carbon for manufacturing. That's the work we did, Okay. I have no skin in the game to keep in natural gas for power for anything other than a transition. There's no reason to do that because it is an emitter. It's not a bigger emitter as call, but it's surely as an emitter. So you've
got to use it as a transition. That's it until batteries become affordable and scatable can actually get more snowy hydros. And why you need a gas pipeline is as much to provide that transition for that, but more for industry, which is why I'm trying to bring it back to the feedstock troilware.
So when the former CEO of Dow Chemicals, who is still on the board of some of the world's biggest plastic manufacturers, talks about manufacturing, he's talking about plastics. I looked into the National COVID nineteen coordination Commission report that Laveras contributed to, and sure enough we get a picture of the subtext of his appearance on Q and A, one of the most popular shows from Australia's public broadcaster,
the ABC. On page twenty two, the report describes how domestic demand for gas could grow further if a weldscale ethylene complex were built Saudi equivalent created ten billion dollars in revenues and twenty five thousand jobs. The Gas Fired Recovery centers on fracking five key strategic gas basins in Australia, and the first to be explored is the Beterloo basin
in the Northern Territory, near la Veris's hometown Darwin. Plans to frack the Beterloo have attracted opposition from at least six First Nations whose country and water will be affected.
You know, it's not like the big hole in the ground. We can cover it all up. This could destroy country forever. You can't go abuck and fits as aquifers, those underground water systems. You can't fix the water once you've destroyed it.
Australia has only recognized native titles since the nineteen nineties, but in practice the law gives little protection to sacred sites and drinking water from fracking. More on this in a minute. Under the Gas fired Recovery Plan, the federal government has handed tens of millions of dollars worth of grants to companies for exploration. In a press release, Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor declared that be Toloo Basin was a key element in the gas fired recovery.
Recent exploration has shown promising signs finding liquids rich gas at a shallower depth than previously expected. Liquid's rich gas, also known as wet gas, is particularly useful for plastics manufacturing, which brings us back to Andrew Lavers's hometown, Darwin, where Laverus was also an advisor to the Northern Territory Economic Reconstruction Commission.
And the plan is to further industrialize Darwin Harbor to create what they're calling value adds for gas. So that would be the production of plastics and petroch chemicals in Darwin Harbor, which we know to be a very toxic process.
So why exactly was Leveris on national television teaching us about this word feedstock. Here's Kirsty Howie from the Environment Center Northern Territory.
It's extremely important to resist the development of plants that use gas as a feedstock plastics, because they would continue to provide an impetus for further gas field developments even if demand for gas for energy falls because of climate change concerns.
We'll get back to plastics in a bit, but first let's rewind back to twenty nineteen, when exploration first started in the Beaterloo Basin on Gadangee Country.
Our creation story is about three mermaids that came in from Nukah, and they traveled all around the old Country, and they came to our place where they were really sad for the ocean, and so they called up the ocean.
That's Ricky Dank, whose ancestors have lived on Goadangee Country, about ten hours east of what is now called Darwin, for thousands of years. Ricky says that the first her family knew that a two kilometer deep well would be drilled near one of her family's sacred sites was when her grandmother saw trucks arriving. Water is sacred to Dank's family because in their creation stories, it was mermaids who brought the water inland.
Our creation story is about three mermaids that came in from Nukah, and they traveled all around the country and they came to our place where they were really sad for the ocean, and so they called up the ocean.
Gadanjie country is mermaid's country where water is sacred and women make the decisions as a matriarchal family. It's Ricky's grandmothers who are the senior nimerinki old country.
It's Marabana, which means it's mermaid's country, women's country. So women make the decisions for our country. So that's why you'll see when I'm talking, it'll be me or my granny's our senior nimrinki are grandmothers talking for country. So it's women's country.
Ricky's grandmothers have seen a lot in their lifetimes. They were only finally given native title to parts of their land in the nineteen nineties when Australian courts overturned the myth that Australia was uninhabited before colonizers arrived, known as Terrannalius.
It really ap say to me, because my grandmothers were made to work with no pay. The were essentially slaves by people coming onto their land and basically taking away their rights and their freedom. And I feel like it's kind of happening again now to them, that you know, people again coming onto their country and stealing it after it was rightfully handed back to us by the courts.
Ricky says her family were not properly consulted before fracking started on their land. The Northern Land Council and Empire Energy claim that consultations did take place, including during community meetings where Ricky's grandmother, who Ricky says does not read or speak English, was present. A moratorium unfracking in the Northern Territory was only lifted after the government made commitments, including that an independent body would be responsible for consultations.
At a Senate inquiry earlier this year, many concerns were raised about the process, including the independence of research on the effects of fracking on land and water in Australia, much of which is funded by the gas industry itself. Ricky's family has passed down the knowledge that the water on their country is special from generation to generation, but Australia's national science body, the CSIRO, is only just beginning
to catch up. Earlier this year, the Csiroro released new research showing that the water in the aquifer is connected across hundreds of kilometers after they discovered that tiny animals living in the aquifer known as Staigafoona are closely related.
The scientific studies through the Northern Territory they're way behind. They're basically flying through the dark.
Here's Nicholas Miliari, Fitzpatrick, A Yanyuwa and garrowa man and a community organizer for seed Mob, speaking to a Senate inquiry about the scientist's discovery.
They need to go and do all that scientific study as it's been proven that the b lewis connected to Matarankas through these little pawns in the water and they're the same their brother and sister that they're not cousins, they're the same. So they're very well connected in the same water table. And that kind of scientific research needs to be undertaken across the whole Northern Territory before anything like this happens. I heard before someone was talking about, oh,
the water is not physically connected. We'll go and physically prove that, because I'm pretty sure that no one's done that work. You cannot just say that doesn't physically connected. We know for thousands of years that a lot of these water tables have been connected, and signs only catching up now.
And you can actually see the water pulsating out of the ground in certain places, and in those places you can't actually see, you know where their bottom is because of course it's connected to the aquifer.
For Ricky's family and thousands of First Nations people, the water from the aquifer is literally life. Fracking poses risks to their water supply as well as her family's cattle farm. Yet despite the risks, the Australian government has been providing funding for exploration in the region. In recent years, Australia has been selling the idea that gas is a transition
fossil fuel. Although this hasn't stopped the government from approving new coal mines, it has led Australia to becoming the world's second biggest exporter of gas after Qatar.
So we've gone from being a relatively small gas exporter to being the first or second largest lergy exporter in the world. You know Katar is it's either rustle.
Then that's Stan Gosher from the Australasian Center for Corporate Responsibility. They currently have a court case pending against one of Australia's biggest gas companies, Santos, over it's claims that natural gas is clean energy. Although the industry is leaning heavily in Australia on suppose it get out of jail free card of carbon capture and storage, even Angrea Laveres, as we heard earlier, is aware that demand for gas as
an energy source is falling. One in four Australian households now have rooftop solar and there are plans for a solar farm in the Beterloo Basin that would export renewable
energy to Singapore. But this hasn't stopped both of Australia's major political parties, the Liberal Party, which in Australia is our right wing conservative party, and the Labor Party, which is the major center left party, from backing a significant increase in Australia's emissions by fracking five new basins, including the be Toloo.
And we had been speaking to politicians about this and warning them about this, but from our understanding, our feeling that politicians are welcoming fracking their welcoming mining, there seems to be a push towards this kind of industry in Australia, even though everywhere else they're stopping it.
Among the companies planning to frack the Beterloo, one relatively junior company known as Empire Energy has done surprisingly well, attracting twenty six million dollars in government grants and tax subsidies. Empire got its start in the heart of fracking Pennsylvania, that has recently switched its strategy to focus on Australia's
Northern territory. The Environment Center Northern Territory is currently in court challenging the Australian government for providing a twenty one million dollar grant to a subsidiary of Empire Energy called Imperial Oil and Gas. Yes, they really called their companies Empire and Imperial.
And the likely emissions from cranking the Beloo Basin are exorbitant. It was estimated that they could increase Australia's total emissions by some eight percent, and subsequently it became apparent that actually that might have been a vast underestimation, and indeed its emissions could increase Australia's emissions by up to twenty percent and really undermine any ability for Australia to meet it's already poultry targets under the Paris Agreement.
So if fracking is so profitable, why do the companies behind it in Australia need government subsidies to fund exploration. Amy has been asking a lot of questions about the supposed profits of fracking this season. Questions about the economic benefits of the industry also came up during a Senate inquiry into fracking in the Beaterloo Basin earlier this year. Here's Senator Sarah Hunson Young of the Australian Greens questioning
the managing director of Empire Energy, Alex Underwood. Okay, so you haven't actually pumped anything into the Australian economy yet.
No I would disagree with that, Senator. We are investing heavily in the Australian economy right now. We carried out a size program in same we drilled our first well in twenty nineteen. We carried out practice simulation and flow testing of that well earlier this year, and we will continue to invest and that is putting capital into Australia's economy.
This is a two kilometer deep exploration mind that Ricky Dank's grandmother discovered was going in when she saw trucks turning up on their country. Can you tell us how much tax Company Tax Empire and its subsidiaries have paid in Australia in the recent.
Years, certainly, Well, we've never generated profits in Australia and so there's no tax on which to pay because we've only ever generated losses.
We obviously pay.
We obviously paid taxes associated with the payrolls and so on and so forth for the people that we employ in this country, but we have not ever generated a profit that would have tax.
Paid on it.
So you haven't paid any company taxes yet. How many people do you employ?
So in.
Terms of direct full time employees in Australia, it's approximately around eight and then when we carry out work programs, obviously they are not people directly employed by our company, but that can grow to thirty to fifty people.
At a time. We also.
Provide a lot of work for Australian small businesses, including consultants. That would be roughly double that eight people full time workforce.
So Mba Energy, which has received millions in government subsidies, has yet to make a profit in Australia and employees fifty or less people here. So where exactly will the money and jobs that will make fracking the be to looo basin profitabile come from. Here's Levers again on Q and A. This time he's been questioned by another panelist on the show, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, about a pretty questionable figure Levers had just mentioned.
Andrew, where are the eight hundred and fifty thousand jobs that used gases.
Feedstock, fertilizers, plastics, chemicals explore eight hundred and working on Australia making plastic?
Yes?
Is that right?
Not plastics all those industries.
I don't think that's true.
Q and A is a live program and often the host will fact check claims during the show, but in this case, the ABC took over a month to put out a correction. It seems somehow the former CEO and advisor to US presidents got confused and was referring to the total number of people working in manufacturing in Australia and.
Behind this Manufacturing task force. You know, he claimed that there was eight hundred and fifty thousand jobs that were currently dependent on gases of feedstock and that's pretty much the number in all manufacturing, which so we know that it's only about ten percent of those jobs are actually dependent on gas to manufacture products, whether it's fertilizers, plastics and chemicals and so on, So the numbers were completely overstated.
The Northern Territory government released maps as parts of a tender process that show hundreds of hectares designated for potential use as ethylene and petrochemical plants.
On Darwin Harbor, there's also a place which has a very high concentration of mangroves of incredible biodiversity values, is used by local people for fishing and recreation, and of course has been used for many thousands of years by.
The Larachia people.
And what's proposed in Middle Arm is when you look at the map of what's proposed which was released as part of a tender last year in the Northern Territory, it shows Middle Arm pretty much obliterated and completely covered by a range of industrial facilities to essentially facilitate gas production, processing and these value adds for gas for plastics, petrochemicals, etc.
Even if the transition to renewable energy sees demand for Beeterloo gas fall, as Amy has reported, the industry is banking on demand for plastics increasing despite the environmental costs.
Clearly, plastics produce greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of their life cycle, including most notably their decomposition at the end of life in landfill across the world.
So far, the government has given about fifty million dollars to companies exploring fracking in the Bee Toloo, but these grants are relatively small in comparison to the billions of dollars that both the federal and Northern Territory governments will potentially have to spend on roads and pipelines in order for private companies to pipe the gas to Darwin. Yet, the Senate Inquiry also heard that, despite the significant costs to the public, gas companies in Australia only sporadically pay
company taxes. Here's Nicholas Miliari Fitzpatrick again telling the Senate Inquiry what fifty million dollars could mean to Indigenous communities.
Fixing roads, more houses. We need programs in reviving our language and cultural practices, but also into the tourism and building small businesses in our communities. There's so much potential for building our economy in that area of tourism and even cultural education. You know, there's a lot of Australians out there that need cultural education. We split up too much, but there there's plenty of other ways to use that
fifty million dollars. And as we are in poverty up here in the territory, like we've we got a mine next to our country there MacArthur River mine making billions of dollars. And you don't look at Borrella. Borrel don't look like a billion dollar place. It looks like it's been forgotten for thirty years. And that's exactly what's happened. Like there's no footpath anywhere around Borloa. The kids are still walking on the road. There has been people by
getting run over on them roads. You know, we need to be really thinking for the future for all of us. Like these kind of industries, all it's doing is hurting us even more. We got the most number in juvenile prison, most suicides. We've been in pain ever since colonization. We're trying to recover and get back to get on our feet. And industries like this threatening our water. Well, we live on water. Everything runs of water, trees, animals. With the
driest continent on earth. Put that fifty million dollars into building a huge water security around the Inte.
For Ricky's family, the potential damage caused by frecking could irreversibly destroy their sacred sites and cultural practices.
If this happens, we won't be able to continue being gone out push, which means we won't be able to continue our ceremony. We won't be able to, you know, follow our song lines, which is so deeply connected to water. So we're scared not just for our country but for our culture that this will discontinue our sixty five thousand years of being. So that's what fracking means to us. It feels like you're trying to grasp water and it's slipping through your hands. That's how it feels like when
you're trying to protect country. And this is why we want to look after it, because we know how precious it is.
Wow, Lindall, this is an incredible story, and it reminds me so much of all the stories we've been hearing about in communities where they're just kind of being ambushed by fracking here in the US too. One of the people that you spoke with said this too, But it does just really strike me. Is I that while other countries are starting to realize that they need to give fracking the boot, Australia is doubling down on it.
Yeah, it's really not great. And the scientific research that the government is supposed to be doing on the environmental impacts of fracking, the Beterloo is being funded by the gas industries, So I'm sure that's fine.
And so these five big tracking companies got together and basically injected a whole lot of money into the CSIRO and said we want.
To be the ones who do the research on what the impacts of oil.
And gas extraction are in Australia.
That's Mark Og from the Australia Institute, who closely follows the research being done at Australia's National Science Agency, the CSIRO, by an initiative funded by five of our biggest fracking companies called the Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance. Or to Sarah for sure.
A study that Jazeera did on potential contamination of air, soil and water by fracking. And what they did was looked at six wells in Queensland and did some sampling around those six wells. Now there's nineteen thousand wells in Queensland. So they chose a very very small sample, and that sample of wells was chosen by Origin Energy, the proponement company right in Origin obviously have a huge vested interest in not finding contamination of their wells.
Industry funding of research has been growing in Australia, where universities were particularly badly hit by the pandemic. I looked into this Advanced Manufacturing partnership of Obama's, which Laveris was the co chair of back in twenty thirteen, and I found that they put out this report that recommended eliminating cups on the amount of corporate investment in university research programs. And Laveras isn't afraid to get behind a bit of
industry funded research himself. At the beginning, I mentioned he is the former CEO of Dow Chemicals, the world's second biggest maker of plastic waste. Well, that figure actually came from the Mindaroo Foundation, a philanthropic organization, and who was a director on the board of Mindaroo Andrew Lavers.
Oh god, So at this point, is there anything that Ricky Dank and her family can do? I know you mentioned a suit, could that potentially put a stop.
To this Unfortunately, a lot of the problems are around the colonial laws that have done so little to protect the native title that Ricky's grandmothers went back. Ricky says her family have struggle to find lawyers to represent them
in addressing how the consultations around native title take place. Currently, both of Australia's major political parties support fracking the Beaterloo, but the Senate inquiry heard from a lot of other tradition irons with similar consents to Ricky's families, and we'll hand down its findings next to you.
Ugh, that is it for this time.
Lyndall, definitely keep us posted on this and I appreciate you bringing this story to us. We will be back with more episodes on the gas industry in the months ahead, so make sure you're subscribed so you won't miss it.
Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production. Today's episode was reported by Lyndall Rollins. Our producer is Juliana Bradley, mixing and mastering by Peter Duff. Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project. Big thanks to our latest Patreon supporters. Mary mc Morris Biell, Evelyn Carl Wilson, Maureene dot com, and Sadine Keller. If you would like to support our work, you can do that at Patreon
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