Dirty Fracking Business (4 page)

Dean loved his lifestyle, had no intention of ever selling his properties and thought that finding gas would increase their value, enabling him to increase his borrowings to buy more properties. He was impressed that Filliburton was doing its best to control the red dust haze by using tankers to spray water on unmade roads and, when Beck asked him if he would like the tracks on his properties watered, he leapt at the opportunity. However, when asked if he would agree to pipes being laid under his property so that gas could be transferred to CEGL’s central compressor station, he refused to even consider it.

As fast as they appeared on Joanna’s property, the workers were gone, leaving behind two well-heads and ancillary equipment, enclosed by chain-link fences with warning placards attached. Flames burned from the flare stacks while meters measured the rate of gas flow, to determine whether the exploration wells would be converted into producers.

For Dean Prezky life was soon to become hell on earth.

Six weeks after Beck and his workers departed, Dean and his kids broke out in nasty, itchy red rashes on their legs and upper bodies, resulting in ugly, painful, weeping wounds. The local doctor referred them to a dermatologist in Paisley who immediately diagnosed dermatitis and then questioned them about changes in their lifestyle and diet. Dean said nothing had changed and that the food and drink they consumed was the same as it had always been. The dermatologist was puzzled, as he had recently seen two other families from Tura who had displayed near-identical symptoms and who had been equally adamant that nothing in their lives had changed. He prescribed creams, lotions and tablets, some of which were not covered by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. By the time Dean headed home, he was out of pocket nearly $800, which he could ill afford.

That night he lay in bed scratching, tossing and turning. He heard the children going to the toilet and then washing their bodies while crying in frustration. Normally he would have told them to get back into their beds but he didn’t say a word, knowing the hell they were going through.

Just before dawn the house was quiet. The kids had finally dropped off from exhaustion, but Dean was wide awake, staring up at the ceiling. Again he went over the dermatologist’s questions and again he drew a blank. He listened to his wife’s peaceful breathing and not for the first time wondered why Vicki had not broken out in a rash. What was she doing that was different? They did everything together: they ate the same meals, drank the same milk and water, tended the fruit trees and vegetable gardens and the only fertiliser they used was horse manure.

As sunlight filtered through the windows, he looked at the bloody streaks on the sheets and decided to take a quick dip in the dam. Then it hit him. The only thing Vicki wasn’t doing was swimming in the dam, saying that the early spring weather wasn’t warm enough for her to venture into the cold water. He sprang out of bed, threw on a pair of shorts and his work boots and went to the kitchen, where he found two of Vicki’s bottling jars. He ran down to the dam, his muscular legs carrying him easily over the rough surface. At the dam’s edge, he knelt down and dipped the jars into the water before holding them up to the early morning light. The water looked clear and he sighed in exasperation as he trudged back to the house.

The kids were usually up by now but he heard no voices, only Vicki moving around the kitchen and the whistling of the coffee percolator. ‘You look like hell,’ she said, staring into his bloodshot eyes. ‘And what have you got in my good jam jars?’

He quickly explained his theory and his disappointment about the clarity of the dam water.

‘Honey, you may be right. What did you expect to see? Amoebas floating around in the water? Just because the water appears clear doesn’t mean that it’s not contaminated and the only way you’ll find out is by chemical analysis, which we can’t afford.’ She sipped her coffee.

‘You’re right. Just because it isn’t murky doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps I could phone Josh Gibson and see if he can get the police lab to analyse it?’

Vicki put her arms around his neck, her firm, full breasts pressing into his chest. ‘The police lab’s there to track down murderers and analyse the saliva of drunk and drugged-out drivers, not find the source of dermatitis.’ She laughed. ‘I’m not saying you’re wrong and I think you and the kids should stop swimming in the dam.’

‘You’d better get them up, or they’ll be late for school.’

‘They had a terrible night and I’m going to let them sleep. Missing one day won’t hurt.’

‘Good idea,’ Dean said, deep in thought. ‘But, if we don’t get the water analysed, we’ll never know if it caused the dermatitis. If it clears up, we’ll just put it down to the medicine and creams.’

Two hours later, Dean was phoning the laboratories listed in the Yellow Pages. From each call he learnt something and the standard question he was asked was what contaminants he expected the analysis to detect? He had no idea how to answer and, by the sixth call, thought that he was beating his head against a brick wall. It was then that he spoke to a technician whom he could tell was of advanced years, who patiently listened to his plight, occasionally asking a question.

‘Have there been any road works recently undertaken near your property?’

‘No.’

‘Have there been any excavations on or near your property?’

‘No.’

‘Has any aerial plant spraying taken place in the area where you live in the past few months?’

‘No.’

‘I’m not sure we can help you, Sir. You say that you’ve been swimming in the dam for years without ever experiencing rashes before. There’s been no disturbance to the land or air that might’ve changed the composition of the water, so it’s highly unlikely that the dermatitis resulted from swimming in the dam.’

‘Did you say disturbance to the land?’

‘I did.’

‘Well, they recently fracked two coal seam gas wells on an adjoining property, but they’re about two kilometres from the dam, so I guess that doesn’t help.’

There was no response from the technician. ‘Hello, hello, are you still there?’

‘Mr Prezky, if you send the water samples to me, together with a cheque for one thousand dollars, I’ll see what I can do. It could be up to two weeks before we have any results and, even then, the analysis may not reveal anything. I do have something in mind though and, if I’m right, you’ll have your results very quickly.’

‘What do you think it is?’

‘I can’t say yet. Be patient Mr Prezky. I’ll get the results to you as soon as I can.’

Dean wrote the cheque but didn’t fill in the butt, knowing Vicki would go crazy if she discovered his extravagance, even if he could justify it. He taped the lids on the jars, tore some old newspapers into tiny pieces and packed them and the jars into a cardboard box, so they couldn’t move or break in transit to Sydney. Thirty minutes later he was in Paisley, despatching the consignment.

That night, while the rashes remained inflamed, the itching eased and Dean and the kids finally experienced some relief. Vicki attributed this to the creams and lotions. By nine o’clock everyone was sleeping soundly. Five hours later Dean sat bolt upright in bed, awakened by the sound of
whirr, whirr, whirr
that he had never heard before.

‘What’s that?’ Vicki groaned.

‘I don’t know, but it seems to be coming from CEGL’s property.’

‘They can’t be drilling another well, can they?’

‘We’ve never heard a noise like that before, so I doubt it.’

‘Do you think it could be coming from the Thompsons’ property next door?’

‘Nah, old man Thompson hates the gas companies and said he’d put a bullet in the first CEGL employee that tries to set foot on his property, so it’s not coming from there.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘There’s nothing I can do tonight. I’ll check it out first thing in the morning.’ Dean buried his head under a pillow.

‘It’s such a horrible, droning noise.’

‘Go to sleep, Darling. There’s nothing we can do about it tonight.’

The
National Advocate
was the first major newspaper to question the veracity and safety of extracting coal seam gas in Australia. In a small article, hidden at the bottom of page twelve, it outlined the American experience, where oil and gas companies had sunk hundreds of thousands of gas wells, with support of legislation which exempted them from having to comply with either the
Clean Water Act
or
Clean Air Act
. The journalist wrote without passion about the poisoning of the water, the pollution in the air, the sickness and, in some cases, the unexplained deaths by cancer of those who had lived in the areas where gas wells had been sunk.

By midday the first emails and faxes, headed
Letters to Editor - Coal Seam Gas
were received, and by four o’clock they had reached avalanche proportions. They came from people living in the Fisher Valley, The Spurling Downs and townships in rural Victoria. Many correspondents were worried that their properties would be seized by the gas companies, others were concerned that national parks and forests would be littered with gas wells and some feared that the nation’s precious aquifers would be contaminated or depleted. However, the majority were concerned about cancer and protecting the health and well-being of their families. The journalist and the editor were staggered by the community outrage, so the following day they published a follow-up article, which profiled the activities of some of the gas companies, including CEGL. This time it was on page three, together with twenty of the more colourful responses in the
Letters to Editor
section.

The reaction to this second article was more subdued; however, there were some responses from residents of the Fisher Valley accusing CEGL of using chemicals that were known carcinogens, which had resulted in the death of six-year-old Charlie Paxton. These responses were passionate and inflammatory - they were also libellous and could not be published. The journalist did, however, phone those who had sent the inflammatory emails to get the full story. The following day, the
Advocate
ran a carefully-worded article, which had been screened by its lawyers, that mentioned CEGL and its contractor’s refusal to disclose what chemicals were being used in hydraulic fracturing, the explosion at CEGL’s gas well and Charlie Paxton’s death, without specifically drawing any conclusions - there was no need, as the article was both subtle and obvious.

CEGL had been in the Harbrow family for a long time and Spencer Harbrow was its third-generation CEO. His father, Winston, might still have been in that position had he not died in a car crash sixteen years earlier. Winston had openly admired the woman who was now Spencer’s deputy, Moira Raymond, but Spencer was jealous of her and her abilities.

When Spencer became CEO, he demonstrated that he did not share his father’s aversion to debt. He had a dream of turning CEGL from a small, family-controlled retailer of electricity, gas and appliances into a major gas producer. He borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars from second-tier lenders on unfavourable terms and at exorbitant interest rates. As his grand plans progressed, money was always scarce, so he raised more capital by issuing shares. The result was that his family’s interest in the company declined from sixty to just eight percent, but the company’s market capitalisation had grown to eleven billion dollars and Harbrow was eight hundred million dollars richer. He liked to boast that CEGL was the only Australian owned energy company, but its share register was dominated by foreign institutions.
The financial press lauded him, but he was uncertain whether he could have achieved his goals without Moira Raymond’s talents and toughness.

Harbrow was tall, slightly greying, tanned and, although pushing fifty-six, had not a wrinkle on his superficially friendly face. Sitting in his sixtieth floor office overlooking Sydney Harbour, he read the article in the
National Advocate
one more time before summoning his PA, Janet Bourne. He gave her precise instructions: get CEGL’s Chairman, Harold Llewellyn, on the phone; get him a macchiato - which only she could prepare to his exacting standards; make sure he wasn’t disturbed; and lastly, track down the other directors in the event that he might need to speak to them. As Janet scurried off, Harbrow paced over to the window, his thumbs pushed into the vest of his
Brioni
suit, and cursorily glanced down at the yachts being tossed around in the harbour. He had used his influence to appoint five, hand-picked, non-executive directors. They all controlled firms that did business with CEGL and were therefore both indebted to him and massively conflicted. The seventh director was Moira Raymond and she had been appointed by the board against his wishes, when he had been ill for three months with pneumonia.

He was anxious to talk to Llewellyn, whom he had appointed Chairman of the company shortly after his father’s passing, because of his business and political connections. Llewellyn was senior partner of the blue-blood legal firm,
Braithwaite Ogilvie and Llewellyn,
and a former National Party minister who knew how to count the numbers and was a past-master when it came to networking and schmoozing. He had not practised law for years, finding managing the practice and being chairman of a number of public companies more befitting his prestige and expertise. Born of wealthy English parents, he was a throw-back to a bygone era: long, silver hair, a matching, floppy moustache, mutton-chop sideburns and florid cheeks. Even after a lifetime in Australia, he yearned for the class system of the old country. Llewellyn fervently believed that he was superior to all others, with the possible exception of the British Royal Family. He also liked to boast that he was one of only a handful of people who had the Prime Minister’s direct number. Despite his pomposity, he was no-one’s fool and was known around the firm as the
Silver Fox.

Harbrow took off his suit coat and hung it on the stand behind his desk, carefully removing the diamond cuff links from his light blue hand-tailored shirt before rolling up his sleeves. The intercom buzzed: ‘I have Mr Llewellyn for you.’

‘Good morning Harold. Have you read that disgraceful article in that disgusting yellow rag? God, they’re saying we were responsible for that boy’s death. It’s defamatory and I want something done about it.’

While he was talking, Janet quietly brought him a cup of piping hot macchiato which he picked up and sipped, neither acknowledging nor thanking her.

‘Yes, and I feel the same way you do, so I took the liberty of running it past the firm’s defamation specialists. I’m sorry, but they say it’s obvious that the
Advocate
took legal advice before it was published. Unfortunately there are no grounds for mounting a successful action.’

The phone went quiet and after fifteen seconds Llewellyn pressed the receiver hard against his ear. ‘Spencer, are you there?’

‘I was thinking,’ Harbrow said, offering no apology. ‘Perhaps you misunderstood me. I’m not looking for damages. I just want to stop them publishing any more rubbish. Look, five years ago the company was worth less than two billion dollars and you well know why it’s grown into the powerhouse it is today. It’s because I had the foresight to apply for coal seam gas exploration licences on massive tracts of land all down the eastern seaboard. The last thing we need is any adverse publicity that results in slowing or stopping exploration like what’s occurred in New York. You know what happened there: the greenies lied and said there was a distinct probability that the city’s water supply could become contaminated. The press believed them and next thing you know the wells and exploration were on hold. I don’t need to tell you that the value of your shares and options in the company will be significantly diminished if the same thing happens here.’

Llewellyn pondered this. It was true; he had made more money from CEGL in the last five years than he had from a lifetime in the law and politics. It also applied to the other directors, particularly Harbrow, who had almost become a billionaire. He didn’t particularly like Harbrow, thinking him a Jekyll and Hyde character: smooth and charming with those in power who might be able to help him and sarcastic and demanding with those on his payroll, including directors. ‘I’ll ensure that a writ is issued before the day is out, claiming unspecified damages.’

‘You said there are no grounds for legal action.’

‘There aren’t, but nothing focuses an adversary’s senses like a well-worded writ and, after it’s served, the
Advocate
won’t be taking liberties with what they print.’

‘It’s a bluff.’

‘Yes.’

‘I like it, but what if they call your bluff?’

‘They won’t. However, if they do, we’ll apply for an injunction restraining them from publishing further defamatory articles. We’ll tie them up in the courts for weeks.’ Llewellyn laughed, thinking that the litigation might turn out to be a nice little earner for his firm.

‘Good.’

‘Spencer, the Western Australian Premier’s visiting next week. Would you like to have lunch with him on Thursday?’

‘Set it up,’ Harbrow said, putting the receiver back in its cradle while simultaneously buzzing Janet. ‘Get me Clem Aspley.’

A few minutes later Aspley was asking, ‘How can I help you, Spencer?’

Clem Aspley was an advertising genius who had twice been bankrupted after taking huge risks that would, had they been successful, have catapulted him to the top of his profession. Harbrow had known from the day they had met that any grandiose plans that he put before the board would have the overwhelming support of Aspley and he had moved quickly to ensure his appointment as a director. Harbrow had few close friends but, as he had got to know Aspley, he found they had many common interests; they were both divorced, they loved wine, they enjoyed the finer things in life and they were committed to making as much money as was humanly possible. Aspley looked and dressed far younger than his fifty-two years and often attended board meetings wearing ripped jeans, a polo shirt and sandals. He may not have been the first advertising executive to use the words ‘clean’ and ‘green’ in relation to coal seam gas, but the form in which he used those words, including the changing of the company’s name, was brilliant, and the public perception of CEGL was that it was an environmentally friendly company.

‘Clem, I’m very unhappy about those articles in the
National Advocate.
Did you see them?’

‘Sure, and I agree that last one was a bit rough.’

‘The
Advocate’s
owned by the Maddock Group and we must be spending a fortune with them. They have magazines, regional newspapers, radio stations and an interest in Channel Twelve, don’t they?’

Harbrow knew that Aspley would have guessed the purpose of his question and be thinking of subtle reasons to oppose it, as he hated changing schedules or breaking contracts. ‘I think that’s right.’

‘No, Clem, you know it’s right and you also know the name of every media outlet that the Maddock Group have an interest in. I want you to cancel every advertisement you have booked and let them know why.’

Aspley groaned. ‘They’re going to sue my arse off.’

Harbrow chuckled. ‘No they won’t. You own one of the biggest agencies in the land and they’ll be worried about you slagging them off and cancelling contracts for other clients. Besides, if you’re successfully sued, which you won’t be, CEGL will pick up the tab.’

‘Don’t do it, Spencer. Robert Maddock doesn’t like being stood over and has a history of retaliating against those who threaten him or his newspapers. It will be very bad for the company if they dig their heels in.’

‘As if Robert’s even going to hear about it. We’re an awfully large account to lose, so let them know, when they stop publishing that rubbish, we’ll reinstate all contracts.’

‘You’re gonna owe me one after this.’

‘Clem, with what we pay you for your unique skills, together with director’s fees, not to speak of the shares and options, I think hell will freeze over before this company ever owes you anything.’ They were friends but Aspley, like the other directors, often needed to be reminded on which side his bread was buttered.

Harbrow put the phone down and smiled, knowing that, once the writ was issued and the advertising contracts severed, the smart-arse reporter and his stupid editor at the
Advocate
would be right in the firing line of those who controlled the cash at the Maddock Group.
There’d be no more derogatory or suggestive articles about CEGL published in the
Advocate
.
It’s always the cash,
he pondered,
and he who has the most gold always calls the tune.
He didn’t have gold but something better - unlimited reserves of methane just waiting to be pumped from the ground.

Harbrow briefly thought about phoning the other directors, but he knew that they would support his actions and he decided not to waste his or their time. Sir Richard Crichton-Smythe was nudging eighty but had lost none of his mental agility or toughness, having started his career as an office boy with Newtower Iron & Steel, a company he now chaired. He had introduced Harbrow to his financial contacts in London when CEGL had been desperate for cash, on the conditions that the company appoint him as a director, issue him a significant number of options and purchase the huge quantities of steel pipe that it used in its gas exploration and extraction exclusively from Newtower Iron & Steel.

One of those London contacts was Joe Biederman, the head of the Royal Treasury Group, an institution that was CEGL’s largest shareholder, with twenty-nine percent of the stock. Like everyone else, the Royal Treasury Group had made a fortune on its investment, but Biederman had never made the transition from highly-salaried employee to entrepreneur. Despite this, he had enormous influence and, while not a member of CEGL’s board, major decisions were rarely taken without his tacit approval. About the same age as Harbrow, his strengths lay in his uncanny knack to sniff out a good deal, an elephant-like memory, his ability to make figures talk without the need for computers and an overbearing negotiating style which centred on the deal being done at his price or not at all. In just fifteen years he had managed to increase the size of Royal fiftyfold. Shareholders loved him and he was on an enormous salary and options package but his one weakness ensured that his package was never enough to make ends meet. She was platinum blonde, a real-life Barbie twenty-five years his junior, who had been a hat check girl at one of the clubs when Joe, a happily married man, had walked in one night and fallen head over heels in love with her. The divorce was messy, drawn out and expensive, but not nearly as costly as marrying young Trish. She spent fifty thousand pounds a month on clothes and cosmetics, had a chauffeur-driven limousine and a passion but not a taste for art, on which she squandered millions. Joe Biederman was a brilliant investor and one of the very few men whom Harbrow deferred to.