Natural Resources Committee: Innamincka and Moomba Fact-Finding Visit

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (11:33): I move:

That the fourth report of the committee for the Fifty-Fifth Parliament, entitled Innamincka and Moomba Fact-Finding Visit, be noted.

From 20 to 22 September last year, the Natural Resources Committee conducted a fact-finding visit to Innamincka and Moomba. This is the committee's report of that visit, and I encourage members and the public to read this report.

The purpose of the trip was to learn about the carbon capture and storage project of Santos at Moomba, which is a terrific investment on behalf of Santos. They are really trying to take a lead in carbon capture and storage. To go up there and witness it firsthand was terrific.

While we were there, we saw something that future generations will probably not see, which was a piece of kit made in Italy, flown out here, and it was not allowed to be opened until the Italian engineers were here to do it. Once that was put in place a few weeks later, then that was encased by the rest of the plant. It was a historic moment for us all to be up there.

I want to thank the management and staff of Santos, who were so welcoming and took us through a very detailed briefing about the procedures and then proceeded to take us on a tour of the site so that members of the committee could see it for themselves.

We also visited the settlement of Innamincka, a very important part of South Australia's history. It is a place that I have been fortunate enough to be going to since I was 14 years old, when we went on a school camp up the Birdsville Track and down the Strzelecki Track. For those South Australians who have not been to our outback, it is one of the most spectacular places in the world, and it is right on our doorstep and is not that far away.

Check the road conditions but, by and large, it is pretty easy to get around. You can get all the way up to Marree on the bitumen these days. The Strzelecki Track is being surfaced, and we were told by the local residents that that will bring with it some more challenges as it opens up that part of the world to people with caravans and not so high-end four-wheel drives, so there will be more visitors, and that is great thing for people to see. However, we need to make sure that there is an investment there in resources to be able to meet the demand of all these extra tourists.

I do not think too many politicians make it to Innamincka. We invited the eight local residents to come and have dinner with us and discuss any issues they had. It was not contained to things regarding natural resources, I might let the parliament know. There were aspects about health, aspects about development, about water and many other subjects that were covered. It was terrific for the five of us who were there—I do not reckon Innamincka would have seen five politicians at the same time. I am sure the local member and various ministers have been up there from time to time, but it was a really good opportunity for those of us who represent remote locations. I include in that Kangaroo Island. Because of the water, it is hard to get on and off the island, a lot harder than it is if you just have to drive somewhere without getting on a boat or a plane.

I want to thank the member for Gibson, the member for Waite, the Hon. Frank Pangallo and the Hon. Russell Wortley, who went on that trip to Innamincka and to Moomba, and Alison Meeks, the parliamentary officer, and Jennefer Bagaporo, the research officer. I would also like to thank them for all the work they put into planning the trip, taking all the notes and putting together the report. I am sure members and members of the public will find it interesting.

I want to thank the National Parks and Wildlife staff as well, who are so passionate and proud of the very special 1.3 million-hectare park that they look after at Innamincka. Their knowledge is extraordinary. It was great to spend time with them, not just out in the park but along the Cooper Creek and also sitting around and talking to them about what they see as the challenges with more people coming up to the area and things like that.

There are challenges but also opportunities. We should make sure that we stay ahead of the curve on that, and make sure that we do everything we can to create opportunities for people, not let them down if they get there and make sure that we have the resources there for them to have a good time.

I would really like to thank traditional owner, Robert Singleton, as well. He is also director of the Yandruwandha Yawarrawarrka Traditional Land Owners (Aboriginal Corporation). Robert's insights and knowledge were unbelievable. Every single member of the committee really enjoyed Robert's insights and the knowledge that he so graciously shared with us. He told us some amazing stories. He told us also about the great cooperation that is happening with Santos.

He said that back in the early days they would go and do stuff and then maybe think, 'Gee, that went a bit wrong,' but now everything that is done is done in consultation with the traditional owners. He said it is a very good relationship at the moment. He also spoke about the opportunities and risks associated with sealing the Strzelecki Track and what that might bring in a few years' time. It was really good for us all to hear from Robert about his view.

I commend the members of the committee for their time and work on this visit and acknowledge the important work that the committee staff has done in pulling the report together. I commend the report to the house.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:40): I rise to speak to the Innamincka and Moomba fact-finding visit. Apart from having a longstanding interest in that area, I worked there 40 years ago and have made multiple trips since. It is a fantastic part of the world. There is oil drilling and exploration, and obviously gas in the Cooper Basin through to Queensland and the Northern Territory.

I really salute Santos for going to great lengths to get this carbon capture and storage process in place. The beauty of it is that they will use depleted wells. A lot of these depleted wells are close to Moomba, fields like Moomba itself, Moomba South, and Big Lake where we did a lot of work on various wells then. Back in the day, there were 11 drill rigs operating and one workover rig, so there were a lot of holes getting drilled. These rigs would each drill a hole 10,000 feet in a month in the old days, so they had to have sites built. When I was earthmoving, we were doing that work.

What we see with this carbon capture and storage are those depleted wells, which, more likely than not, were fractured wells. From March 1983 to March 1984, I was a junior hand working on wireline teams and we did conventional fracturing of gas wells. That certainly opens up the reserves underground, the reservoir. The beauty of that is that those reservoirs, which are now depleted, can be used for this carbon capture and storage project, which helps offset not just carbon emissions but potentially emissions from elsewhere.

It is interesting to note that there is a lot of disinformation around fracturing gas and oil wells. I have been on a trip to America to look at it. Standing here today, there is probably a well either being conventionally fractured or unconventionally fractured to get those vital assets. The state will need gas for at least 30 years, I believe, as we transition to other forms of energy.

I note that the member for Mawson mentioned the Strzelecki Track. We instigated that $215 million project to seal the 472 kilometres of the Strzelecki Track. Yes, there will be some new, interesting times when people can basically drive up there in a mini because now you have the challenge of at least being organised. I always take a satellite phone so if anything goes wrong I can talk to people.

There is a road directly east of Moomba, the Della Road, which was like a highway 40 years ago. Now it is just rutted. It is a main arterial route heading from Moomba to Della, Dullingari, Toolachee and other fields and heads out to Dillons Crossing, where you head north again to Innamincka. That road needs major work. It got to the stage, for safety reasons, when I was there, that they pulled the speed limit back on basin roads to 80 km/h. They are now at 60 km/h. Tourists can chug past at 80 ks and you feel like you are almost speeding going past a road train that is literally rattling along, shaking to bits, at 60 km/h.

It does not do much for productivity and there are many, many hundreds of kilometres to traverse. In the old days of going up there, they used to joke that the pallets of food and even the beer cans had their labels rattled off and they had disappeared by the time they got to the Moomba camp.

The resealing is a project that not only will assist this state well into the future, and not just the oil and gas industry, but it will be another link right through to Brisbane. It will also assist our pastoral industry, to get that stock down south to the processing works or to get stock up there when they are in times of plenty of feed and plenty of rain.

I am disappointed in how the contract has been running out for the Strzelecki Track build. I am very proud that we started that when in government. It is a very stop-start operation, which concerns me greatly. Only 40 per cent is complete. There is a section of Dillons and a section further south near the Strzelecki Creek, south of Moomba, that need a bit more engineering to get up to speed. Both sections are about 20 kilometres. Obviously, you want to get it right before the paving goes in because it will be hit with a heap of traffic: road trains, tourists and others. You need that right because otherwise it will just fall apart. So I am disappointed it is taking so long. It seems to be such a stop-start process.

It is not handy for contractors who have contracting camps that cost $50,000 to move whenever they have to move them. They just leave them up there in the Cooper Basin, and it is just not on. They really should just get on with it and get it done. We cannot have the excuse that has come out that we have had 94 days of wet weather when there have been over a thousand days of dry weather when the project could go on. There are things happening now with the road as it is.

On one trip coming home, I had what was probably the funniest couple of nights of my whole life. I was up there with my 16-year-old son at the time, Angus. We were at Innamincka and parked near the Cooper Creek. We had a great week up there. It started to rain a bit as we packed up and, because you are packing up a camper trailer and all the gear, that takes quite a while. We got to the shop and they said, 'You won't get home because it will be wet at Murdi,' which is about 60 kilometres south of Moomba. I said, 'We're going to give it a crack.' Well, we got down there, and there were about nine road trains pulled up—there is a stretch of bitumen there—and they said, 'You're not going anywhere.' Once they saw us pull the barbecue out of the back of the camper, we ended up being the caterers and had quite an entertaining time for a couple of nights, because no-one was going anywhere.

That is the issue with the Strzelecki Track: it takes nothing to get it too wet in a lot of spots; and there is a lot of freight that needs to go up and down that road and not just for the oil and gas industry. The issue for me is that a lot of that freight is now coming in from the Queensland side. It is bitumenised through Adventure Way from the Queensland border through to Innamincka—a 30-kilometre stretch that has been done for a few years now. I have not seen all the piece that has been bitumenised down towards Dillons Crossing near to Della Road but it certainly will change the face of the basin, and we need people to be alert to outback driving conditions when they go up there and also to respect that it is a working area.

It goes to show how low impact the oil and gas industry is. Once the oil wells go in, there are basically underground lines through to a satellite station and then straight into Moomba. A lot of the time you have to look really hard to even find a gas well. I showed a photo to some young lads one day. I said, 'Well, there's gas.' They could just see a gas well that was protected by about four strands of barbed wire to keep the cattle off, and that was it. The site had been rehabilitated when the hole had been drilled and all the other activities were done to get that production online.

Certainly, in regard to carbon capture and storage and the work Santos has been doing up there for probably close to 60 years or more now, it has brought a lot of wealth into this state and they are looking at what they can do to not only offset the carbon, as I indicated earlier, but get it stored underground.

I wish them all the best with that project and I urge anyone who has never been up there—it is only 1,000 kilometres—to just go for a drive. You have bitumen for 40 per cent of the Strez, past Lyndhurst, and you have bitumen to Lyndhurst, just the other side of Leigh Creek. It is well worth a look. I commend the motion and wish Santos and its partners all the very best with the carbon capture and storage project.

Ms HUTCHESSON (Waite) (11:50): I rise in support of this fourth report of the Natural Resources Committee, a committee of which I am a member. The report is about our trip to Innamincka and Moomba. It was an incredible trip. I have never been so far north before. There is almost nothing there, but when you look at it from above it is like Aboriginal paintings. It is so incredible to see all of the natural resources, all of the rivers, lakes—all of it. It was just amazing.

I echo the sentiments of the Chair in thanking everybody who helped us get there, including Alison in our chamber. We had a wonderful time. It was interesting to meet with the locals to talk about their challenges, not only in the work they do every day but also in the isolation they sometimes feel up there. I had a really great conversation with Tegan, one of the owners of the Innamincka Station. She talked about how hard it is to even talk with other women in the area, especially when you have young children and have those children trying to socialise with other children. Not only do we get to go on these trips and look at things the committee is interested in, but we also get to engage with local residents, which is lovely seeing what it is like for them.

I would like to thank Rob Singleton, who is an Yandruwandha Yawarrawarrka man. He took us on an incredible journey through Innamincka, all the way through to the Cullyamurra petroglyphs, which are rock carvings at least 4,000 years old, although he will say older. It was such a magical place to be to see that history, to think about what happened there and what those petroglyphs meant. It was a very special place for men and boys, he told us, so we were very fortunate to be able to go there. I congratulate him on his nomination for the South Australian Voice as well.

We were very lucky to be taken around by National Parks and Wildlife Service: Paul McKinnon from National Parks in the area and Penny from Dig Tree, a Dig Tree ranger. Tony Magor, who was the manager of that area but is now the manager of Mount Lofty Ranges and looks after my area, is always very helpful and knowledgeable—him and Stuart Paul, the district regional operations manager. They took us around. We had wonderful conversations about how they manage the national parks up there and how the integration between the national parks and the pastoralist areas and the animals that flow between the two occur.

We were very lucky to go there; I will definitely put it on my list to go back. All the people at the Innamincka pub were lovely and looked after us with great hospitality, and it was such a great opportunity to see something completely different and to see what was happening up there. We visited Moomba as well, and it was fascinating to see the transition towards a sustainable future, taking their emissions, compressing them and putting them into the disused gas wells. It is an incredible opportunity for them to become almost carbon negative, which is exciting, and to see their work in electrifying some of the areas and what opportunities exist further for areas like that.

I thank everybody involved—all the staff who took us there, all the committee members and the Chair for his leadership—and I commend the report to the house.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (11:53): I thank the committee for making the journey up into the Cooper Basin. It is a great part of our state. On reflection, I spent some of my younger days up in the Cooper Basin, working out of Moomba Central. Back in those days we spent a lot of time on the roads. Whether on the Innamincka or the Strzelecki Track, it was always an adventure. As I think the member for Hammond said, back in those days it was not much more than a goat track that used to wreck vehicles on a regular basis. It was good to see that members of the Natural Resources Committee could get up there and have a look not only at the natural environment but also at one of the great natural resources in this nation and, importantly, in South Australia.

My tenure up there was in the early to mid or late eighties. I went up there as a maintenance fitter, and it was a great experience to work in Moomba Central itself. Moomba town has a population of about four people, but Moomba Central has a transient population, fly-in fly-out. What it presented not only to the state's economy but also the training and the skills that people went up there with and came away with really was an eye opener, and it was for me.

As I said, I worked in the maintenance department within the processing plant for about 12 months. I was ever looking for opportunity, and along the way I went out as a private contractor working for Supervision Engineering Services. It was a great contracting company to work for, and I was able to claw my way up as a project manager up there for pipe construction.

That is basically what Moomba Central is about: it is a conglomeration of pipes and vessels. We piped gas into what we called 'the trains', and I hope the committee did get into Moomba Central to have a look at what the trains represent. Essentially, raw gas is pumped to the bottom of these train sets and solution is pumped to the top of it. That is what cleans the gas and turns raw gas into natural gas.

Over time, while I was up there we saw construction of the LRP, the liquid recovery plant. That is where the precious gases are extracted out of the natural form of gas, and that is where the value add was developed, I guess.

The history is that Delhi was the founding business in about 1966 or 1968. It went on and morphed into a partnership with Santos while I was there. What we saw was a formation of the MAPS system. The MAPS system is all about the pipeline, the distribution of the gases and condensate, remembering that Moomba Central is a processing plant but the Cooper Basin is a huge network of wells, from which they extracted a lot of natural gas but also a lot of condensate and a lot of raw, sour water.

Delhi-Santos was a very productive partnership, if you like, and then later we saw the formation of Beach with a partnership with Santos. That has seen highs and lows, and while I was up there we saw the lowest price return for natural gas and condensate in 1985. Of course, we also went on to see the highs in about 2005.

While I was up there we were following some of the exploration wells, and some of those exploration wells they would explore and find deposits or reservoirs of the natural resource. Some of it had some orifices put in so they could continue that gas or condensate coming up to the surface to be pumped into the production facility. It was done at a very, very small and slow pace at that time because the prices were very low. Everything is driven by commodity price.

Without too much further ado, it was a great opportunity to experience the Cooper Basin, the Strzelecki Track and Innamincka. As my time runs out I will sit down and I guess rejoice on some of the great memories I had up in the Cooper Basin.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (11:59): I want to thank the member for Chaffey and the member for Hammond for taking us on those wonderful trips down memory lane or the Strzelecki Track, and also my fellow committee member, the member for Waite. Once again, I would like to thank everyone who was involved in this report and I commend it to the house.

Motion carried.