Dirty Fracking Business (3 page)

He silently cursed Paxton. What would Bianca think in the morning? He stared up at the blackness of the ceiling, listening to her soft rhythmic breathing as he struggled to get his head around the day’s events. He was bone-tired but knew it was pointless trying to sleep - his mind refused to shut down. All Paxton’s power and money wouldn’t save him from a lengthy jail sentence once word got out about what he had done. Steve wondered who he could share his secret with, who he could talk to, and how long it would remain a secret? He momentarily thought about waking Bianca but stopped himself, not knowing how she would react, given her father’s love of the coal seam gas companies.

Besides Steve, the
Paisley Chronicle
had one full-time employee, one part-timer and, when he felt like it, Steve’s sexagenarian father, Len. The paper operated from a double-fronted shop on Main Street. It was rare for anyone other than Steve to work on Saturdays, and even rarer for them to be there at 7am, so he was surprised to find the door open. He was exhausted and wondered whether he’d forgotten to lock up the night before. As he entered the office, he heard sounds coming from the despatch section at the rear of the building. ‘Hello,’ he shouted.

‘Steve, I thought I’d clean up and be gone before you arrived,’ croaked a grey-haired man, nearly as skinny as the broom he was stooped over. ‘Couldn’t you sleep?’

‘Dad, how many times do I have to tell you? I’ve got contract cleaners coming in.’

‘Well, you’d better get rid of them, they’re no good. What was the excitement about last night? I heard one of CEGL’s wells blew up. I wish I had been there. I would’ve fanned the flames.’

‘I was there and it was pretty spectacular.’

‘So what happened? How’d it start?’ His father’s face was lined and his jowls were sunken but his green eyes were alert and twinkling.

‘You can’t breathe a word of what I’m about to tell you, Dad.’ For the next five minutes, Steve related what had happened and how Billy had supposedly seen a big black wolf. ‘That stupid Paxton will be caught before the week is out. He’ll go to jail and the anti-CEGL forces in the valley will lose all credibility. Can you believe he was so stupid?’

‘You did say the well exploded a bit after midnight, didn’t you Son?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Phew. It’s lucky you didn’t say anything last night then.’

‘Why?’

His father sat down at one of the desks, rubbing his gnarled hands together. ‘I was with Charles Paxton last night. I knew he’d need company so I went to his home around ten o’clock and didn’t leave until two-thirty. We talked and had a few drinks. I think it helped ease his pain.’

‘Dad! Dad, don’t be as stupid as he is. You weren’t at his home last night and since when have you been friends with him? You’re too old to go to jail, so forget about this foolishness.’

‘I’m telling the truth, Son. Have you considered that there might be more than one black dog in the valley?’

‘Of course, but there’s only one that looks like a wolf, and it wouldn’t surprise me to find that it has a burnt coat.’

‘I need a coffee.’ The old man sighed, holding his head in his hands. ‘But there’s no milk in the fridge.’

‘Are you all right, Dad?’

‘I’m feeling a little dizzy, but it’s nothing a good cup of coffee won’t fix. I’ll go and get some milk,’ he said, stumbling as he stood up.

‘Sit down, Dad. Take it easy. I’ll get the milk. I want you to forget about Paxton. You’ll only get yourself in trouble. I’ll lock the door after me to stop anyone coming in and disturbing you, so why don’t you put your head down and have a rest?’

‘That’s a good idea.’ His father crossed his arms on the table and rested his head on them.

As soon as Steve closed the front door, his father staged an amazing recovery and, for one so old, showed amazing alacrity. He first called his wife. It was short and sweet and she had no hesitation in agreeing with him. His second call was to Paxton and the phone rang ten times before he answered, sounding slurred and hung-over. However it did not take him long to focus and express his gratitude.

Paxton hung up the phone and staggered out onto the verandah, nearly tripping over Cosmos lying across the door. He bent down and patted the dog’s head, rubbed his tummy and checked his magnificent, shiny black coat. There wasn’t so much as a burnt hair, let alone a singe mark and Paxton breathed a sigh of relief. The satisfaction of what he had done had disappeared; he had a crushing hangover and, if it were not for Len Forrest, he’d be in a lot of trouble. His actions the night before had done nothing to remove the aching pain from his heart and, while he cursed himself for acting impulsively, he was unrepentant and still seething.

There were half-a-dozen locals chatting in the milk bar while they waited for the newspapers from Sydney to arrive. Steve took a carton of milk from the refrigerator and then heard someone laugh and say, ‘If you didn’t know any different, that Paxton dog would pass for a wolf.’ There was a murmur of assent and then someone else said, ‘I think it’s just what we needed. Now maybe those gas companies will clear out of the valley.’ Steve paid for the milk, thinking,
so much for it being secret.

Sandi patted the big black dog that so resembled a wolf, while her partner listened in amazement to Paxton. He said that he knew nothing about the destruction of the gas well other than that the explosion had rocked the house and that, along with Len Forrest, he had gone outside and they had seen a red glow in the sky. Other than that, he had not left his house.

It was only a short drive to the Forrests’ place, where Len confirmed everything Paxton had said. Maggie, who was known to be as honest as the day was long, added that Len had left home before nine-thirty and, being the light sleeper that she was, she had heard him come in just after three o’clock. Josh was emotionally torn; he had not been looking forward to arresting Paxton but, by the same token, was shocked to find that three pillars of the local community could tell lies so easily. What was
big gas
doing to his community?

Paxton, while well respected, would never have won a popularity contest, but this largely changed overnight. People walked across the street just to say hello and others wanted to buy him a drink; storekeepers, restaurateurs and motel proprietors, who did a lot of business with the gas companies, were not so generous. Len Forrest had always been gregarious, happy and generous with his time and what little money he had. The locals slapped him on the back, high-fived him and there wasn’t a winery in the valley that would charge him for a drink or a meal, but there were many in the town who disapproved of what he had done. Paisley had created two unlikely heroes and, to those who knew of Maggie Forrest’s involvement, a heroine, but the ‘heroes’ were not universally popular or supported.

Billy McGregor and his hoon friends sat around the pub, drinking and talking, amazed at how popular the two old men had become with most of the townsfolk. Billy noted that they hadn’t been charged or punished and instead were lauded. He rationalised that, if that was how it worked for
them
, maybe he and his mates should blow up a few gas wells too. Little did he know that Steve Forrest had warned his father that a consequence of his lies would be to induce others to commit the copy-cat destruction of more gas wells.

Joanna Singer had just turned forty-four when she collapsed with a heart attack while cleaning one of her clients’ houses. Paramedics responded to the emergency call within minutes but defibrillation was not successful and an hour later she was pronounced dead.

She had arrived in Paisley twenty-five years earlier, a single mother with two toddlers and had rented a shack on thirty-five acres on the outskirts of the valley, near the small town of Tura. Many said that the hard work she had taken on had worn her out.

Despite its rugged beauty, it was one of the few infertile areas in the valley, with an abundance of gum trees and tumbleweed and little else. The properties in the area had originally been granted by the government as residential allotments to soldiers returning from the First World War, who consequently became known as
estatees.
Originally there was a certain honour to the name but, as the years elapsed,
estatee
became associated with being poor, even though the residents never saw themselves in that light. Many of Joanna’s neighbours lived on residential blocks as large as seventy-five acres and had moved there because they were hiding something from their past and looking for privacy on their own piece of paradise.

For Joanna it was quiet and peaceful, she loved the freedom and the rent was cheap. She was remarkably industrious and, with both kids in her old beat-up Volkswagen, she drove around the towns in the valley, offering to wash and iron clothes. It wasn’t long before she had established a regular clientele. When young Danny and Carol were old enough to go to school, Joanna started cleaning houses in the area. She worked hard, didn’t go out, didn’t waste money and soon saved enough to put a deposit on the property she was renting. Her only indulgence was the plants and trailer loads of black soil she bought to create a stunning little garden around the house. She had no close friends and seemed to live her life solely for her children. However, once they left home in their late teens, she rarely heard from or saw them but, when she did, they were always after money. Sadly, when she was buried, only a few of her long-term clients were at her graveside.

Lawyers for Joanna’s estate placed the requisite notices in newspapers and unsuccessfully used their best efforts to find Carol and Danny, who were Joanna’s sole beneficiaries. Joanna had managed to pay off the mortgage and her estate comprised the property and a new second-hand Toyota Corolla that she had treated herself to in a moment of despair.

Four years before Joanna’s death, 300 acres, a few kilometres to the west of her property, was bought, anonymously, by CEGL. No-one in the area was aware of this until it was too late.

A two-metre steel mesh and barbed wire fence was erected to encompass the property but, other than this, it lay undisturbed for twelve months, while CEGL lodged applications for coal seam gas exploration licences which ran to thousands of pages. The environment authority application by itself was nine hundred pages and was signed off by seventeen employees with illustrious titles like: Manager Engineering Upstream, Environmental Scientist, Manager Water Strategy and Sustainability, Senior Engineer Technical Interfaces and Legal Counsel Upstream. CEGL knew that the paperwork detailing the process was far more important than the process itself and they buried the responsible government departments in a mass of documents that they had neither the expertise nor the time to adequately assess. After the authorities and licences were issued, the only regulation was company self-regulation; not unlike licensing a fox to look after a chicken coop.

A placard,
Keep Out CEGL Construction Site,
was affixed to the gates and, soon after, workers began laying a gravel track and clearing a five-acre square section. Twenty portafabs, made up of offices, storage and ablutions, were placed around its perimeter. It didn’t take long to drill the first of eight exploration wells.

A few weeks after Joanna’s death, three CEGL trucks appeared on the red dirt track at the front of her property. One of the trucks was fitted with a seismic vibratory plate and it stopped every fifteen metres along the three hundred and fifty metre boundary where the plate was lowered to the ground. The other two trucks carried sophisticated computers and geophones, which were placed in a geometric array on the surface to detect the seismic signals from the changes in rock type or faults. CEGL knew that there were deep coal seams in the area and the seismic testing allowed their geologists to confirm and measure their extent and depth. However, before the volume of methane and its flow pressure could be measured, exploration wells had to be sunk.

While Joanna’s lawyers had been unable to contact her children, CEGL’s attorneys had no such problem, having more resources and a large, powerful client that desperately wanted access to her property. Within a week, a private investigator had located Carol and Danny, informed them of their mother’s passing and offered to lease the property that they were going to inherit; a corporate client was looking for grazing land. Danny wasn’t very bright but he had a nose for a dollar and told them he wasn’t interested in leasing and that if their client wanted the property it would have to buy it. CEGL’s management did not normally buy property when they could dupe landowners into granting access agreements, but thirty-five acres was a small allotment; it was cheap and would give them a toehold where they could sink another two exploration wells. They also knew that the wells, once sunk, would devalue the adjoining properties, making their subsequent work easier. By the time Carol and Danny marched into their mother’s lawyer’s office, they had come to an agreement to sell the property to CEGL. Two hours later they were back on the road to Sydney, not having been able to spare even ten minutes to visit their mother’s grave.

Although Joanna’s property was neglected after her death and quickly became over-run with weeds, the neighbours were surprised to see a bulldozer demolish the house and destroy what was left of the garden. Soon, huge trucks carrying gravel, arc lights and engineering equipment roared along the unmade roads at all times of the day and night, terrifying the locals and throwing up a constant haze of red dust. Progress, industry and exploitation took the place of peace and tranquillity. The flimsy, old front gates to Joanna’s property were replaced with heavy steel gates that were padlocked, and large placards were affixed to them announcing:
CEGL Private Property Trespassers will be Prosecuted
.

It wasn’t long before gangs of men employed by CEGL and an American company, Filliburton, were working on the property around the clock, seven days a week. Armed with heavy equipment and truckloads of gravel, they extended the track to the east and west boundaries, where they ripped the vegetation from the ground, levelled it, and constructed two large, hard-standing pads measuring one hundred metres square. Portafabs were quickly positioned around the perimeter of the east pad and light towers powered by diesel generators were installed. Two pits were excavated: one for collecting the saline-laden, toxic wastewater, and another for collecting drill cuttings and for flaring in case of striking methane pockets while drilling.

When the pits were completed, a convoy of semitrailers brought in components of the first drill rig. Under the direction of tough, hard-cussing area supervisor, Frank Beck, the men quickly assembled these in much the same way a child assembles a Meccano model.

Beck, from Colorado, was a Filliburton oil and gas veteran whose remuneration was based on the number of wells he could sink. An ex-marine of medium height and heavyset build, it was obvious that his nose had been broken many times and his sandy hair was cropped in a style that said he was still a marine.

After he quit the services, he got a job with Filliburton, working as a labourer on the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. It wasn’t long before he was promoted to assistant foreman, his toughness and ability to get things done coming to the fore. These attributes did not go unnoticed and he soon found himself in charge of installing drilling rigs on coal seam gas projects in Wyoming and then Colorado. Private landowners were no match for him and he sank countless wells on their properties.

Streams and aquifers were polluted, methane seeped into houses, and the sound of drilling and compressors was never-ending. Folk living in close proximity to the wells collapsed after breathing the heavily-contaminated air, and others were afflicted by cancers and dermatitis. The government, the EPA, and the Colorado Gas and Oil Conservation Commission, which were meant to protect citizens, did nothing. The landowners screamed, there were threats of legal action, there were death threats, there were rowdy town meetings and in some instances gas wells were sabotaged, but for Beck it was like water off a duck’s back and he arrogantly stared the Colorado gas dissidents down. The good citizens of the Fisher Valley held no fears for him.

Drilling began two weeks after the first gang entered Joanna’s property. The first rig drilled down to a depth of about ten metres before it was replaced with another rig with a smaller diameter drill which extended the bore to two hundred metres. Arc lights lit up the pad and the neighbours could see and hear the drilling twenty-four hours a day. Beck never left the site, shouting and cajoling his men to work faster. Hundreds of trucks roared onto the site carrying steel pipes to reinforce and enclose the well, and cement was forced down the bore hole to encase the exterior. A blowout preventer was installed at the surface and pressure-tested to confirm the integrity of the casing cement. This was done in an attempt to prevent gas or water leakage around the casing, as the consequences of toxic fracking chemicals entering the aquifers was too horrible to contemplate.

Hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’ is a process where water, sand and toxic chemicals are forced down well-bores in huge volumes under enormous pressure to break-up the coal seams hundreds of metres below the ground, so methane can be released. For the gas companies, the great thing about fracking is that, when the methane pressure and recovery decreases, the well can be fracked again and again; sometimes up to twenty times. The National Water Commissioner warned of the risks involved in large volumes of water being extracted, the depressurisation of coal seam aquifers and the disposal of large volumes of treated wastewater. However, when CEGL threatened to withdraw their massive investment from the valley, the federal minister rolled over in favour of the company and disregarded his commissioner’s findings. This, despite the very real risk of contaminating the valley’s drinking water, the Blaxland River and its tributaries and the water used for livestock, crops, vineyards and wineries.

It took just twenty-eight days to complete the drilling and then the steel pipe and concrete casing were perforated at the level of the coal seams so that the toxic fracking concoction could be forced through the perforations. Engineers and scientists employed by CEGL were adamant that the poisonous cocktail they were pumping into the coal seams could not escape or seep into the surrounding aquifers and streams. However, this was exactly what had occurred in Colorado.

When the first exploration well on Joanna’s property was ready for fracking, trucks delivered sand and fracking chemicals while tankers brought in hundreds of thousands of litres of water to be pumped down the well-bore. Hydraulic fracking opens the cracks already present in the coal seams’ gas reservoirs and the sand keeps the induced fractures open, ensuring an uninterrupted gas flow. No-one on site knew what the fracking chemicals comprised. Filliburton described them as additives and claimed they could not reveal their contents, as they were proprietary, just like
Coca Cola’s
famous formulae.

Beck had fracked hundreds of wells but the process still excited him. Often the ground shook as the coal seams fractured, at other times a fizzling sound emanated from deep within the earth, and sometimes the physical impact was minimal. When the first well on Joanna’s property was fracked, it was as if the area had been hit by a mini earthquake and Beck high-fived his workers and grinned with satisfaction. No-one from the government or EPA had attended the well-site.

Dean Prezky owned three properties to the west of Joanna’s property, totalling about one hundred and thirty acres. He was a strapping young man in his mid-thirties with dark black hair, powerful chest and arms and a deep tan from the days he spent working outdoors as a carpenter. He had built a rustic house, complete with solar panels that powered his property for ten months and in the two coldest months he used a diesel generator. A water well had provided fresh drinking water since 1920 but Dean also installed two ten-thousand-litre water tanks that caught rain for use in the house, allowing him to use the well as a reserve. There were five dams on the properties and Dean and the kids used one as a swimming hole. Like Joanna, he too had bought rich black soil - but in far greater quantities - and had used it to build a large fruit and vegetable garden to make his family self-sufficient. He craved privacy and his goal was to buy the adjoining properties until he owned around five hundred acres, which he reasoned would finally put enough space between him and the outside world.

When Dean complained to Frank Beck about the bright lights on the well-pads on Joanna’s property, he was met with profuse apologies and assurances that they would be repositioned so as not to shine into the windows of his house. Dean wasn’t someone to stand in the way of progress and during the conversation with Beck he agreed to let Filliburton access his properties during the day to transfer materials and speed up the completion of work. He’d heard stories about how the gas wells would change life in the valley for the worse but he had ignored them, guessing that it was just the whining of a few millionaires trying to shield their hobby vineyards and horse studs. He had little sympathy for the Fisher Valley Protective Alliance and believed that the gas companies might one day provide his children with jobs.