The Linc Energy $ 4.5 million fine and conviction certainly sends a message that ecological vandalism with disastrous consequences will not be taken lightly and has now set a precedence. 

But –

• it has been suggested that it may cost $38 million to clean up
• it cost the government $2 million and 6 years to investigate

Let’s not forget that it is the government who owns the resource and it is the government who gives permission to access the resource, so the chain of responsibility should really start there with accountability within the government for the decisions made to allow this type of unmitigated disaster.

ALSO the fine and conviction and the Judges comments about disastrous consequences are inconsistent with the other narrative that the government is pushing – that the contaminations is only isolated and limited conveniently to a boundary fence – that it is self limiting and abating, not as this conviction and penalty illustrates as unprecedented, undefinable, disastrous and evolving!

This case exemplifies the trial and terrible error that the government is pursuing in its insatiable pursuit of unconventional gas

Despite the assertion of the government and APPEA that CSG is not like Linc,  they are similar. Particularly in that CSG is also unconventional in technology and methodology, it carries similar risks such as aquifer contamination, atmospheric emissions, fracturing of the land form, potential release of contaminants that will be difficult to identify and impossible to contain/remediate, if not worse since it is so geo spatially wide and intense

The players and instruments in the Linc event are still in play both in pursuing the Linc type technology in SA and in the CSG arena, and infact the CSG industry are imminently entering this same Linc contamination zone but do not have on public record the risk assessment that determines that this same trial will not result in terrible error.

The fact that this outcome has been pursued and executed in terms of environmental harm and the penalty is payable to the government, but the harm to people, their businesses, homes and health is absent (as is the peoples access to such data) – exemplifies the desperate need we have to fill the gap in the independent, impartial judiciary, good democratic institutions and democratic processes associated with the rights of the people expected to host the unconventional gas industry.  Which is the foundation of the International Permanent Peoples Tribunal Session into the human rights impact of unconventional gas being held next week.