Yesterday the Newman Government announced a new oil shale
policy that it will allow the development of a commercial shale industry in
Queensland but leaves in place the existing 20 year moratorium suspending
development of the McFarlane oil shale deposit near Proserpine.
The policy will set rigorous environmental controls on the
industry and will allow existing oil shale operator Queensland Energy Resources
Ltd (QER) to progress its trial plant at Gladstone to commercial stage.
The rights to several large oil shale resources in
Queensland are currently held by QER, who will now be able to proceed directly
to commercial production given their pilot plant near Gladstone had
successfully demonstrated the viability of its processing technology.
To date, there has been extremely limited commercial
application of oil shale in Australia and overseas and for this reason all
proposed oil shale developments and activities will be subject to detailed
environmental assessments on a project-by-project basis. Under the new policy,
proposals will be assessed on their merits and will require a trial stage to
determine the feasibility and environmental performance of any unproven
technologies.
The approval process for any oil shale development will
require operators to adopt best practice environmental management techniques
and comprehensive monitoring of the process, and its emissions, wastes and
impact on the community and environment. Existing and new operators in the oil
shale industry will need to prepare full Environmental Impact Statements for
their projects.
In Australia the largest oil shale deposits are in
Queensland with oil shale deposits totalling more than 20 billion barrels, with
major deposits located in areas such as Yarwun and Proserpine.
The oil shale industry has the potential to create a large
number of new jobs in Queensland, including thousands of jobs in the
construction phase of oil shale projects alone, and provide royalties and other
economic benefits for regional communities and the broader economy.
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