Philip Pells answers to John Ross from AGL!

Water Testing by Parsons Brinkerhoff - Gloucester NSW

ABN 74 978 620 434
Phone: 02 4381 2125
Fax: 02 4381 2126

The Old Post Office
49 Lakeside Drive
MacMasters Beach 
NSW 2251
www.pellsconsulting.com.au

Our Ref:P034.L411
October 2013

To Mrs J Trynes
Gloucester
NSW Australia
Dear Madam
STATEMENTS BY JOHN ROSS RECORDED AT AGL ON 3 OCTOBER 2013

INTRODUCTION
This letter addresses two sets of statements by Mr John Ross at the AGL offices in

Sydney on 3 October 2013 recorded and available to the public on the Internet:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_YurzVMAmw&feature=youtube)

AGL GLOUCESTER OFFICE

1. PRODUCED WATER IS SAME AS THE NATURAL PROCESS

The first set of statements claims that the groundwater at coal seam level in the Gloucester Basin all reports to the Avon River, so that bringing it to the surface as Produced Water from CSG bores is no different to the natural process.

To examine this statement recourse is made to the Parsons Brinkerhoff Groundwater Report (PB) of January 2012

.Parsons Brinkerhoff provides the following facts:

1. The groundwater in the young, alluvial deposits in the valley is sub-modern”.  Meaning it is between 50 and less than 1000 years old.
2. The groundwater in the fractured rock above the coal seams is between 4000 and 19000 years old.
3. The groundwater in the coal seams is between 9600 and 21600 years old.
4.  “Groundwater discharge from the alluvium is primarily to the rivers as baseflow, and during the monitoring period the following salinity ranges observed: TSW01 – 25.7 to 753.5 μS/cm ASW01 – 20.2 to 774.4 μS/cm ASW02 – 93.8 to 301.9 μS/cm.”
5. “The low permeability inter burden units are locally saturated, but generally act  as confining layers between and overlying the coal seams. The layered aquitards of the inter burden units create separate and distinct groundwater systems with no connection evident between the deeper coal seam water bearing zones and the shallow rock and alluvial aquifers.
Contrast the above with the fact that a 1000m deep CSG bore will bring 10000 to 20000 year old   Produced Water to the surface in a matter of weeks, and according to the PB report that water would have a Total Dissolved Solids of about 3000milligrams per litre (conductivity of 3000 to 5000μS/cm) - i.e. about 10 to 100 times higher than the typical Avon water. In particular that water would have a high bicarbonate content which recent work at The University of Technology in Sydney has shown is significantly more toxic to river critters than are chlorides.

Therefore it is considered that it is misleading for AGL to claim that the Produced Water just mimics normal processes.

2..SALINITY

John Ross is recorded as saying that the Produced Water from The AGL wells at Gloucester will bring less salt to the surface than natural rainfall over 10 square
kilometres.

The facts are as follows:

According to published research by the CSIRO the chlorides deposited through rainfall diminishes rapidly with distance from the coast, and at Gloucester it can be expected that the deposition rate could be about 15kg per Hectare (10000 sq. metres) per annum. Therefore for 10 square km we would have 10*100*15= 15000 kg per annum (or 15 tonne). In this regard it should be noted that there are no data specific to the Gloucester-Stroud-Barrington area.

At this time there is no way of knowing how much Produced Water will come from the Stage 1 wells at Gloucester. We know that as of 2101 AGL had 56 million litres stored on site1, containing about 168 tonnes of dissolved solids (chlorides and bicarbonates).

We don’t know over what period this water was produced, but think it was about 3 years (giving 56 tonne per annum, or about 4 times John Ross’s 15 tonne.  We also don’t know what will be the annual Produced Water from the more than 100 Stage 1 production wells –but it is reasonable to assume that each well will produce between 2 to 5 litre per second.  If we adopt a value of 3 litres per second then each well will produce about: •3*3600*24*365 *32= 284 tonne of salt per year.

In order for John Ross’s claim to be true AGL would have to have only 1 CSG bore every 10 sq. km, with each bore yielding less than 0.16 litre per second of produced water.  This seems highly unrealistic to say the least.

Again, it can only be concluded that this statement by John Ross on behalf of AGL is misleading.

1. Parsons Brinkerhoff, Jan 2012  2 (litres per second)*(seconds in an hour)*(hours in a day)*(days in a year)*(gram of salt per litre), with PB measurements giving about 3 gram per litre in the coal seam water.
P034.L4
Pells Consulting
11 October 2013
PHILIP PELLS
FTSE BSc(Eng) MSc DSc(Eng) FIEAust MASCE