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The Environmental Protection Agency is investigating a coal seam gas leak within a few hundred metres of houses in western Sydney on Sunday night, prompting calls from the Greens for the NSW government to suspend all current CSG activity.
Shortly after 7pm on Sunday night, residents of Spring Farm, near Camden, reported a hissing sound and escaping gas from one of the nearby AGL coal seam gas (CSG) wells.
Three NSW fire and rescue crews attended and used water to disperse the vapour cloud.
“Firefighters also contacted the gas company to advise them of the leak and remained on scene until they arrived to isolate the leak. No evacuations were required,” said fire and rescue NSW in a statement to Guardian Australia.
“Fire and rescue NSW has standard operational guidelines for dealing with gas leaks and firefighters put these procedures into practice last night.”
In response to the reports, the EPA sent an officer to investigate the incident, inspect the well and monitor for methane emissions.
“The EPA is committed to ensuring that the well is maintained and operated in a proper and efficient manner and that the environment is protected at all times,” the agency said in a statement.
“If any licence breach is found to have occurred the EPA will respond with appropriate regulatory action.”
Previous investigations into AGL’s CSG operations in Camden have revealed a number of non-compliances and resulted in fines and an enforceable undertaking.
In December last year, AGL was fined $1,500 for “exceeding air pollutant oxides of nitrogen (NOx) concentrations limits on two occasions in August”.
AGL did not notice the incidents until September when a monthly emissions monitoring report was filed. The EPA expressed concern that AGL’s operating system did not have an alarm in place to notify them immediately.
AGL released a statement late on Sunday saying the hissing sound was the result of a safety release valve activation.
“This caused a small amount of natural gas to escape, exactly as is designed. At no time were any local residents at any risk,” said the company.
A spokeswoman for the company told Guardian Australia its control room received automatic notification of the valve activation, but did not yet know what had caused the buildup of pressure which set it off. She said this sort of incident was “extremely rare” and “had not happened in recent memory”, adding that the company would investigate.
AGL’s statement said the well was now back online and operating safely, but the western Sydney coordinator for anti-fracking group Lock The Gate said it was “another massive failure … in providing basic information to community members”.
“The statement made by AGL doesn’t match with advice to residents from the first responders who described the incident as a ‘gas leak’,” said Dan Robins.
“The NSW government needs to sort this out – families, residential estates and industrial gasfields just don’t mix. It’s far too risky.”
NSW Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham said the incident was “another piece of evidence that coal seam gas extraction is unsafe”.
Buckingham told Guardian Australia the gas leak was within a few hundred metres of homes, and right next to an area of subdivision with houses soon to go up.
“The Greens think coal seam gas is unsafe, for a whole range of reasons, but it’s particularly unsafe in a built-up area,” he said. “There were people there who had moved into their home this month and had no idea they were living in NSW’s largest operating coal seam gas field.
“This shows the planning process and regulation of coal seam gas in NSW is in utter shambles. The government says routinely they have the strictest regime for coal seam gas in the world, but that’s complete rubbish.
“If not for the residents getting out there and monitoring the gas well, there could have been a disaster.”
The NSW government brought in exclusion zones banning new CSG wells within 2km of residential areas in October last year. In January the exclusion zones were extended to future residential growth areas but Buckingham said all buffers should be made retrospective.
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