Gas job boom could be hot air

THE gas industry says it will create less than 10 per cent of the 15,506 wells predicted by the Energy Division of the Resources Department in submissions to the Pepper Inquiry.

Justice Rachel Pepper is heading an independent scientific inquiry into hydraulic fracturing in the Northern Territory.

The Gunner Labor Government has a ban on hydraulic fracturing until the inquiry hands down its report later this year.

However, in an interim report released by Justice Pepper, the estimates provided by three petroleum companies – Origin Energy, Santos and Pangaea – said between 1000 and 1200 wells would be developed over a 25-year period using 150 pads.

One pad can handle up to 10 wells.

The well estimates were for the same areas – the greater McArthur Basin, which includes the Beetaloo and the Roper Basins.

The Energy Division said 6250 wells could be developed in the Beetaloo Sub-Basin.

Origin’s submission was focused solely on the Beetaloo Sub-Basin. It offered two possible development scenarios for its tenements.

The first was a small-scale development requiring between 50 and 100 wells drilled from six to 12 pads over a 20to-40-year time frame delivering 50 to 100 terajoules a day, or the same capacity as the initial Jemena gas pipeline being built from Tennant Creek to Mt Isa in Queensland.

This would use existing infrastructure to connect to the Amadeus Pipeline.

A larger-scale development allowing for the movement of 400 to 500 trillion standard cubic feet of gas per day to serve Darwin or east coast markets would require new pipeline infrastructure.

It would also require 400 to 500 wells drilled on 50 to 65 pads to be built over a 20-to 40-year period.

Origin Energy has completed a test well at Amungee, about 580km southeast of Darwin. Over a 57-day period it returned an average of 1.1 million cubic feet of gas per day accessed through hydraulic fracturing.

Origin’s report estimates the original gas in place is 61 trillion cubic feet across a 1698sq km area.