I am from England, and have traveled to Australia before on a working holiday visa. I am now over thirty so cannot apply for that visa again. I have 16 years experience as a Manager in the Building Supplies Industry and I would like to migrate to Australia on a permanent basis as I have a partner over there. My question is which option would be best suited for me and what are my chances?

Thank you in advance.

So for me, it’s probably good news. I being selfish?

Please, don’t answer, I’m only joking.

Woollies here are totally different from Woollies in the UK, but then I’m sure you know that. And Chumley Warners, yes, I think they do sell loads over on the Bayside, I’m not surprised, good fish and chip shops are hard to find here in Australia.

Firstly, thank you for being up front with us right from the start and telling us you work for a CSG company. As for your points, I will comment briefly, but I will not be entering into a debate with you on this.

It’s only a hunch of mine, but I suspect my two hours of knowledge will not be enough for me to outwit you or bamboozle you with science, something I don’t think you would have any trouble doing with me, in a nice way of course.

As I said, I’m here to learn about this stuff, so I do appreciate you giving me the view from “the other side”, meaning from someone in the industry.

I think the main areas of contention between what I have read and what you have said in your comments are around the use of water. You say farmers use five times as much water for irrigation purposes, and you have implied that the water the CSG industry does use is simply cleaned up, and some salt is extracted and dumped.

I read something like a possible 31,000,000 tonnes of salt will need to be dumped over the next 30 years. That’s a lot of trucks driving around, or an awful lot of piping that needs to be laid. None of this strikes me as being very environmentally friendly.

I would have also thought that irrigating the land with water so that the food we need to eat will grow seems like a healthy use of water. Mixing water with chemicals and sand and blasting away with it deep underground to extract a gas doesn’t seem such a healthy use of water to me, so I don’t think the two can be compared.

You say these Wells can leak but normally don’t, Lock the Gate say “Over 50% of wells tested in Queensland leak methane. Many landholders have reported instances of methane in their stock watering bores and even household taps.”

You say methane gas is “cleaner than coal”, but other sources I read have suggested that once you take everything into account, the methane leakage into the air, the trucks driving around full of salt, all the pipes that have to be dug, the huge plants operating 24/7, and the process of mining the methane, then the cost to the environment is far greater, so it doesn’t make it that green an energy after all.

I also read, again on the ABC website, and I quote “….very few of us know that methane is 22-or-so times nastier than carbon dioxide.

Once again, let me start by saying ‘everything is made from atoms’.

Carbon dioxide is made from one atom of carbon and two atoms of oxygen. Methane is a bigger molecule. It’s made from one atom of carbon and four atoms of hydrogen.

So, one tonne of methane has the same carbon dioxide equivalent as 22 tonnes of carbon dioxide.”

Source: ABC Science

So, as you can see, I’m not convinced. I did take a look at the website you recommended, but there is so much information there and I am not yet ready to dedicate my life to finding out all about CSG.

Besides, I’ve always felt that if something is so complicated that you need to study lots and lots of information to fully understand it, them somebody is trying to hide something.

But why should anybody take any notice of me, I started off by saying I was going to be brief!

Cheers

Bob