Adaptive Groundwater Management in the Emerging Australian Coal Bed Methane Industry

Santos and its partners Petronas and Total, are developing a Coal Bed Methane to Liquid Natural Gas project in Queensland, Australia. Over the next 4 years, Santos will commence the development of a CBM wellfiled comprising around 2600 wells, producing up to 600 million standard cubic feet of gas per day.  The LNG plant, located at the coast of Queensland, 430 km away from the wellfield will liquify around 3 million tonnes of LNG per year for export overseas by LNG tanker ships. The CSG wellfield is spread over a north-south distance of over 200 km (125 miles) and at peak prpduction will produce up to 60 million l/day (15 million US gallons/day). The Santos project is however, only one of four such projects proposed for this area.

A significant part of the CBM development is sandwhiched between aquifers of the Great Artesian Basin (GAB), a world - class artesian basin that underlies 1/5th of the landmass of Australia (1,711,000 km²).  The planned development lies near to the recharge beds of the GAB. The aquifers of the GAB not only support local groundwater users, but many ecological communities, several of which support species found only at a particular discharge spring. 

This paper will describe the hydrogeological setting of the GAB, the issues that affect its vulnerability to impact the aquifers from the emerging CBM industry and the measures that Santos, in collaboration with the local regulators, are implementing to develop adaptive groundwater management to protect the resource while enabling the industry to proceed.  Parallels will be drawn with the CBM industry in the United States and the issues of community concern and stakeholder interactions will also be addressed.