Santos has reiterated its commitment to protect water and the environment during the development of the company’s Narrabri Gas Project.
In a short video feature released today, Santos’ Narrabri-based Hydrogeologist, Glenn Toogood, explains how the company is 100% committed to understanding water.
The video is the second in a series of features that highlight the support Santos has in the local Narrabri community and the benefits our operations bring to the area now and into the future.
“As a Hydrogeologist, I spend a lot of time working with local land holders understanding ground water in this area,” Mr Toogood says.
“What we do to ensure that we don’t impact any agriculture land is to handle that water very, very carefully.
“We will continue to communicate with our farmers in the local area. This is important as we believe this will create a long term sustainable relationship with both Santos and the agricultural community well into the future.”
The water we will extract through our Narrabri Gas Project is not from the Great Artesian Basin. It comes from much deeper underground. The Project will extract on average 1.5GL per annum compared to the more than 300GL used each year by other industries in the Namoi Catchment. The independent Namoi Catchment Water Study of 2012 found that developments far larger than ours would have an insignificant impact on useable water sources.
Santos is working with landholders across the region to ensure we are not having an impact on groundwater. All landholders close to our operations are given the option of having their bores monitored to be confident there is no impact on their water.
To date, we have sampled water from more than 100 landholder bores in the area. In addition, we have installed a network of monitoring bores to enhance the coverage of monitoring locations across the region.
The data from Santos’ bores is available to the public through an online water portal system at www.santoswaterportal.com.au.
Local Narrabri business owner, Ron Campbell, whose Namoi WasteCorp employs 27 people, said he has seen firsthand how Santos protects the environment.
“I work in it every single day…I see it at the drilling rigs, they are laying the casings down, there is an inner casing for the gas, there is a heavy duty outer casing to protect the gas line, then it is encased in concrete. You can’t do any better than that,” Mr Campbell says.
Local landholder Peter Gett, who has Santos operations on his land, said there is “a lot of integrity between farmers and Santos.