OIL AND GAS EXPLORATION

The Hon. M. PARNELL (15:51): Adelaide has this week hosted the annual conference of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA). This is the peak national body representing Australia's upstream oil and gas exploration and production industry. Whilst the government and the hospitality industry get very excited about the 3,000-odd well-heeled delegates filling our hotel rooms and restaurants, the conference is in reality an orgy of self-promotion and self-delusion.

It is described as a 'feast of fossil fuel fantasy', and I would like to refer to some of the items that were on the agenda of this conference. First, we had the annual announcement by the federal minister of the release of more offshore areas for oil and gas exploration. In our state, this means exploration in new deepwater zones in the Great Australian Bight and off the coast of the South-East. Last year, it was off the coast of Kangaroo Island and Lower Eyre Peninsula.

But how short are our memories? It was only last year that our TV screens were filled nightly with burning or gushing oil facilities off the coast of WA or in the Gulf of Mexico, where the natural perils of going into deeper water, rougher seas and more remote locations delivered us massive oil spills, delivering environmental disasters with consequent loss of wildlife and the economic livelihood of whole coastal communities.

But, not to worry, the oil industry has a cunning plan, announcing a 'world-class sub-sea response solution' to deal with what they euphemistically describe as an 'offshore well incident' or, as most people would regard it, an oil spill or pollution disaster. Whilst this investment is welcome, let's not kid ourselves that future leaks and spills will not occur again and that, when they do, they will not be horrendously difficult and expensive to control. With the best available technology, it still took millions of dollars and many months to control the massive oil leaks from last year.

Next we had the routine assurance that fossil fuels are here to stay and certainly not running out. We were told that we have 250 years' supply of gas remaining at current levels of demand, which of course means much less than that, given the enormous increase in global demand for energy and plans by industry and governments to replace some of the dirtiest coal-fired power stations with gas as a supposed transition fuel, as an alternative to going straight to renewable energy. We contrast this with a report from WWF that, at present rates, we will need two planet Earths to accommodate our voracious demand for resources by the year 2030.

Not to be outdone by his federal counterparts, our own Premier was out in front of the fossil fuel faithful with his announcements. One that jumps out is a commitment to a 'roundtable roadmap for unconventional gas projects in South Australia'. In lay terms, this means coal seam gas or shale gas, most likely in the Cooper Basin but presumably also in the settled areas of the South-East of our state.

In the Cooper Basin, production of conventional gas has peaked and is now in decline, so, like the search for oil and gas in deeper water offshore, we are now looking for gas that is more difficult and environmentally more risky to extract. The road map released this week makes for interesting reading. First of all, if you think that it deals with climate change, or our need to reduce our carbon footprint, you have to think again. In fact, there is almost nothing in 217 pages on the matter, other than on page 93, where it says:

With high integrity well construction, the use of natural gas for power generation yields roughly half the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of coal-use for electricity generation.

But is that true? If you compare the best possible gas with the worst possible coal, is gas twice as good? The answer is that it almost certainly is not, and in fact it may be worse. We have had visiting experts from the United States, including Scott Anderson, the senior policy adviser in the energy program at the US Environmental Defense Fund, who basically said that the jury was still out on what benefit, if any, derived from burning gas compared to coal.

We know from the presentation given by Doctors for the Environment in parliament here this month that burning gas has a range of health impacts as well. We know that the idea of peak oil and peak gas is not on the agenda of industry and neither is it on the agenda of the federal government. In the most recent budget, there was an announcement of 12 times as much spent funding roads compared to rail. I would like to conclude with a quote from the US Navy Secretary, Ray Mabus, who was referring to the fact that fossil fuels are so much cheaper; therefore we should keep using them. He said:

Well, of course it is! Every new technology is more expensive. What if we hadn't started using computers because they were more expensive than typewriters? What if we hadn't started using cell phones because they were more expensive than land lines? Where would we be then?

Time expired.