LINC LYNCHED

Fellow Linc investors.
This article was in the Courier Mail here in Brisbane this week.
It is what I always thought that Linc was burned at the stake as a sacrifice to the Greens to enable the State Labor Party to win the state election here in QLD.
Stuff all of the investors who invested in a perfectly good technology when it was necessary to appease the Greens.
Read this and weep!

Lockitt

Mystery around alleged contamination at Linc Energy plant at Hopeland

After the Stage Government wasted $40m prosecuting Linc Energy for environmental breaches at a Darling Downs gasification plant, landholders say there is little evidence of contamination, writes Des Houghton.
Des Houghton
Linc Energy founder Peter Bond travelled with former premiers Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh on trade missions. File picture: Glenn HuIt is four years since Linc Energy was found guilty and fined $4.5 million for causing environmental harm at its experimental underground coal gasification plant at Hopeland on the Darling Downs. And a mystery remains.
The court heard methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen were detected around the facility with some gases capable of “asphyxiating” humans and animals.
The state government imposed an “excavation exclusion zone” on 314sq km around the site and banned landholders from digging holes deeper than 2m. Later it was reduced to a 10km exclusion zone.
Grazier Toby Trebilco who lives within the exclusion zone told me he is still baffled by what was “the disaster that never was”.
There are no outward signs, above or below the ground, that the project contaminated farmland, he said.
Indeed, scientists told him recently he was free to water his cattle from a Linc bore within 1km from the plant because repeated testing has found no contamination.
“They gave it to us,” Trebilco said. “There are 17 or 18 bores in the exclusion zone that have been tested and no impurities have been found.
“I have lost count at the number of times it has been tested and come up clean.
“We were told the underground water table was contaminated but there are no signs of that.”
He believes the story of a “calamity” was exaggerated.
“It hurts me, and it breaks my heart,” Trebilco said.
Trebilco breeds cattle, as his forebears have done for 121 years since arriving from Cornwall. No cattle were asphyxiated, and his meat tests clean of chemical residues. Not a single kangaroo or bird or fish has died from noxious gas, as far as he can see. And there have been no explosions, as landholders were warned to expect.Hopelands cattle farmers Toby and Ted Trebilco.

Linc Energy’s fall from grace was spectacular because then-premier Peter Beattie declared the project one of state significance in 2007, hailing it as a Smart State “clean-coal technology”. The underground coal gasification process involved igniting coal underground and drawing off the gas through a series of wells. Linc told investors it also wanted to produce gas-to-liquid fuels, including diesel and aviation fuel.
Beattie even invited Linc founder Peter Bond to travel with him on a trade mission to New York in 2007 to spruik the investment opportunities. Beattie’s successor, Anna Bligh, also championed the project and took Bond to India on a similar mission.
Significantly, it was the state-owned power station operator CS Energy, not Linc, that bankrolled the initial UCG trials. Linc purchased the facility and was given a licence by the mines department to escalate the underground tests.
I was fascinated to read a recent report in the Chinchilla News that Arrow Energy now seeks to extract gas in the exclusion zone. Arrow chief Cecile Wake said, “an incredible amount of scientific study” showed “a low likelihood of contaminants leaving the former Linc Energy site”.
Wake said Lock the Gate had made inflated claims about the dangers and independent testing and tests by Arrow showed “no immediate threat”.
She added: “Arrow stands by its modelling that this is most likely never to occur as the contaminants break down and are absorbed by the surrounding coal.”
Solicitors from two different firms reckon the cost to taxpayers of prosecuting Linc has passed $40 million. And because Linc was in liquidation, the fine will never be paid. It also meant that Linc offered no defence to the prosecution arguments.
However, former Linc directors still face action under “chain of responsibility” laws.
Solicitor Alan Girle, who is not involved with the case, questions the “extraordinary amount of money” spent on the prosecution.
He speaks with authority. Girle was a lawyer with the Environmental Protection Agency for six years.
“We have been given the estimate the government will spend $40 million in prosecuting Linc and its directors,” he told me.
The amount was far more than the government usually spends on prosecutions, he said. “Some might say the money would have been better spent on local farmers in the region.”
Girle said he was yet to see any evidence of serious environmental harm.
“The government has made allegations that there could be explosions, toxic groundwater or asphyxiation of plants, animals or humans,” he said.
“Ten years on we cannot find any evidence of this.”
Meaghan Scanlon, the Environment Minister, declined to comment.
Her department said in a statement: “The Queensland government charged five former Linc Energy executives over the operation of the site. On 5 March 2020, a Brisbane magistrate decided there was sufficient evidence to commit the former officers to stand trial (in August) for failing to ensure that Linc complied with the Environmental Protection Act.”
END