annual report seems well received, page-27

"Where is the information coming from that water is mostly potable?"


That's a very good question. The last I read (May of this year), ESG takes the water produced from Narrabri to Bibblewindi via flowlines where the company has water handling facilities which includes a 5 hectare evaporation pond which uses a misting system to aid the evaporation process. From there, ESG uses the treated water for its own purposes in drilling activities, dust control, and disposal back into the Bohena Creek. The concentrated water is put into an evaporation pond.

By-product water on an individual well can vary between0.1 mega litres per day (ML/d) and 0.8 ML/d and the water tends to have a high salt content in addition to other constituents, which means that it must be managed properly and has to be treated if it is to be re-used.

These ponds are able to be used in NSW but Qld put a ban on further development of evaporation ponds for by-product CSG water within the state. This has meant that companies in Qld have had to look at different methods of dealing with their by-product CSG water, including both commercial and non-commercial options.


Here is what ESG Chief Commercial Officer Roland Sleeman said about dewatering in May. My apologies in advance if this is has been posted in past:



“The base case for us is to treat the water using Reverse Osmosis, so we’ve had a pilot RO plant successfully operating on site reliably and efficiently for a couple of years."

From there, ESG uses the treated water for its own purposes in drilling activities, dust control, and disposal back into the Bohena Creek. The concentrated water is put into an evaporation pond.

“We have a five hectare pond with an advanced evaporation system installed on it,” he says, explaining that it is a misting system that speeds up the evaporation process.

“Looking to the future, we will look for and see whether we can identify better initiatives,” he says.

However, Mr Sleeman does not see ESG using the by-product water as a future income stream in its own right.

“Water rates are initially high when you bring a new well online and will drop away with time, so we’re not in the business of producing water and wouldn’t want to go down that path of entering into arrangements that guarantee supply of it or anything like that.

“But if we can find value adding uses or if we can find uses that are beneficial to the regional community, whether it be for use in some industrial process – the process might also use gas – or for farming or other uses, then we would be pretty interested in doing it,” he says.


So yes, more water can mean more gas, but it also means more cost.