from the papers.., page-35

Few comments on the fraccing issue:

1. CSG fracs are about an order of magnitude smaller than shale gas fracs. So any shale frac is equivalent to about 10 CSG fracs.

2. The toxic chemicals in American fraccing fluids are banned in Australia - the reason they're not banned in America is because the oil lobby is so powerful and has friends in such high places (Bush, Cheney etc) that they managed to get exemptions to the environmental regulations. So Australian fraccing fluids are non-toxic - and 99.9% of it is just water and sand. It's much easier to frac shallow coal than deep shale and you don't need any high-tech proprietary chemicals to do it.

3. The near-surface aquifer contamination issues in the US seems to be the result of poor cement jobs in the casing, not fraccing. This is logical because it's impossible to frac through two miles of solid rock from the shale to the aquifer. Instead, poor cementing means the gas and toxic frac fluids can get up the outside of the casing and into shallow aquifers. So this is not a fraccing issue - it's a cementing issue. Incidentally, Cheney's company Halliburton are the biggest wellsite cementers in the world.

4. ESG fracced the earlier pilots (3-spot and 9-spot) but no longer uses fraccing, and doesn't plan on doing so in the future.

In summary, there appear to be some genuine problems with the shale gas industry and water contamination in the US, but you can't immediately relate that to Australian fraccing, much less to ESG which doesn't even frac.