by Peter Ralph
‘Frank, I just wanted to sound you out. We can discuss the details after you’ve successfully completed our little project.’
‘Is the offer conditional on that?’
‘You betcha! You’ve got a lot of planning to do so I don’t want hold you up. Remember, the fewer people who know what you’re doing, including employees, sub-contractors and suppliers, the better.’
‘Sure. I’ll treat it as if I was back in the marines.’ Beck marched confidently to the door, knowing he was in the middle of a power struggle and that he would need to play both sides until a clear winner emerged.
Chapter 28
Saturday’s edition of the National Advocate always included a glossy magazine titled Long Weekend. Steve rarely read it, but the photo of an exploding oil platform captioned Is the BP disaster finally over? caught his attention. He sprawled out on the couch, with his coffee on the floor beside him, and settled in to read the five-page treatise.
In April, 2010, BP was drilling an exploratory well in the Gulf of Mexico to a depth of fifteen hundred metres, when a methane bubble under extreme pressure flew up and out of the drill column at enormous velocity, where it expanded on the platform before igniting and exploding, killing eleven workers. Efforts by multiple ships to douse the flames failed and thirty-six hours later the platform sank. For the next three months, the equivalent of five million barrels of crude oil gushed from the well while all attempts to cap it failed. As the oil spread, it caused massive damage to wildlife and marine habitats, as well as the Gulf’s fishing and tourism industries. Nearly a year after the explosion, tar balls continued to litter the shore, the crude oil on the ocean floor did not seem to be degrading and dead dolphins were washing up along the coast. Many described it as the worst man-made environmental disaster in the history of the US, and BP committed to spend forty billion dollars in the clean-up, but, despite this, there were those who thought that the Gulf would never recover. The White House Oil Spill Commission found that BP and its contractors had done things on the cheap, which helped trigger the explosion and the leakage that followed. The drilling rig’s last line of defence was a massive three hundred tonne blowout preventer sitting on the ocean floor, designed to cap the well, that BP had described as ‘fail-safe’, but which had still failed, albeit by only centimetres. The writer concluded that, while the oil had stopped gushing, the disaster would be with the folk of the Gulf for another twenty years.
The words ‘fail-safe’ troubled Steve and he turned his laptop on, looking for the transcripts of the speeches given the night Nick Gould had announced CEGL’s twenty-billion dollar investment in the coal seam gas industry. He soon found what he was looking for. Spencer Harbrow had guaranteed that CEGL’s processes were fail-safe and that CEGL would not do anything that might endanger the health of the community or the environment. How could he, when CEGL was using toxic chemicals and drilling thousands of wells through aquifers and near the Great Artesian Basin? The oil in the Gulf of Mexico had spread over eleven thousand square kilometres; the Great Artesian Basin was over 150 times larger and, if contaminated, would be impossible to restore. How could governments be complicit in developing coal seam gas wells when it was impossible for big gas to guarantee that the underground water would not be ruined for future generations?
Chapter 29
Sally Brown and the kids jumped at the opportunity to get out of Paisley to make a fresh start on Tom Morgan’s stud. Andrew wasn’t a devious man but the following day he phoned his boss and complained of severe work-related anguish and said that he desperately needed to get away for a few months. He emphasised that he didn’t even know if a long break would cure him. His boss was uncaring, fearing that Andrew was setting the bank up for a big WorkCover claim for stress-related mental illness. He suggested that, if Andrew was away for an extended period of time, it would be difficult to hold his job in Paisley and that on his return he might have to be relocated to another branch, which could prove disruptive.
‘I don’t want to upset the bank.’ Andrew sniffled, as if stifling a sob. ‘You’ve been so good to me but I don’t know if I can go on. I could resign, but that wouldn’t help, because I’d still have to work another month and I’d lose so many benefits.’
There was a long pause. ‘Andrew, your health is paramount. If you think resigning and getting away will help, we wouldn’t be so churlish as to withhold anything that was due to you.’ Then, for the first time in ten years, he complimented him. ‘You’ve been a fine employee.’
‘But I’d lose my last month’s pay if I left immediately.’
‘Not at all. Given the circumstances regarding your health, we’d be happy to pay you a month’s salary in lieu of notice and you could finish up tomorrow.’
‘That’s very generous of you.’
‘Andrew, when you get better, phone me and I’ll see if I can find a position for you.’ He hoped he would be seeing the last of this weak-willed manager who procrastinated about enforcing foreclosures.
It took no time at all for the Brown family to rent their house out and move into the manager’s residence at the Portman Stud. The children loved their new school and the open spaces. While Sally knew they would never regain the friends they had lost, they would not lose any of the few remaining and, hopefully, would no longer be reviled. Andrew felt as if an enormous weight had been lifted from his shoulders and each day family life became a little happier.
The community had been outraged by Your Nation’s exposé of the coal seam gas industry and the program’s producers had immediately started work on a follow-up program which, courtesy of Dennis Fulton, they called The End of a Dirty Line. Recently completed, it had been extensively advertised and had drawn a massive peak-time Sunday night audience.
Libby Hanover was seated in the front of the Channel Six helicopter. ‘This is Kravis Island, a beautiful semi-tropical atoll and home to over 200 species of fauna, including birdlife, wallabies, wombats, goannas and a near-extinct possum-like marsupial. Fifteen kilometres from Newtower, it’s only accessible by air or boat via the Tapered Straits. It is home to 600 species of flora, huge towering eucalypts and native grasses and flowers. The lagoon is a fisherman’s paradise teeming with fish and marine life.’
The camera panned over the lush, green island and vividly-blue lagoon, surrounded by pristine, yellow beaches. ‘This is nature at its most perfect and it’s where the methane extracted three hundred kilometres away in the Fisher Valley is going to be piped, before being processed and consigned to huge tankers for shipment to China and India.’
She paused, as the camera panned low across the dense foliage, before coming to a huge, cleared area. There were hundreds of men, bull dozers, cranes, trucks, huts, three recently-poured massive concrete slabs and a number of partially-erected buildings. ‘The ugly scar you’re looking at is a designated liquid natural gas precinct, set aside by the government, so that CEGL can construct a gas liquefaction plant and a deepwater port for huge tankers. The pipeline from the Fisher Valley will run to Newtower and then continue under the Tapered Straits and across this stunning island to the liquefaction plant. Ecologists claim that the dredging of the straits has destroyed the seagrass and so far has resulted in the deaths of one hundred turtles, five sea lions and four dolphins. Fish are diseased with lesions on their bodies; fishermen are going broke and wholesalers are refusing to purchase their catches. The government denies this and says that it has completed ecological studies and that the laying of the pipeline has not impacted on marine life. Spin doctors for the same government announced that the grant of land to CEGL on Kravis Island amounted to only one percent of its area, but, what they didn’t tell us, was that it amounted to seven hundred acres. Seven hundred acres!
‘The workers you can see are building three processing plants known as trains, which convert the gas to liquid by cooling it to minus one hundred and sixty-two degrees centigrade. This reduces its volume to one six-hundredth of its gaseous state, making it very profit
able to ship.’
The camera panned back to Libby. ‘One of the many problems associated with producing this supposed clean energy is the enormous usage of power in the cooling process and the reconversion back to gas at its eventual destination. Needless to say, this will spew carbons into the atmosphere - exactly what our esteemed political leaders say they’re trying to stop.’
The next shot was of Libby standing with the ubiquitous Dennis Fulton, backed by 300 greenies and outraged locals, noisily protesting. They were about fifty metres from the gates to the construction site, with twenty police between them and the cyclone and barbed-wire fence; there were a similar number of private security guards behind it.
‘Dennis Fulton, the last time you were on this island you were jailed after you chained yourself to a bulldozer. I hope we’re not going to see a repeat performance.’
‘I spent a night in the Newtower police cells.’ He laughed. ‘And the following day I was heavily fined by an overzealous magistrate.’ He didn’t say that, like the many other fines he’d incurred, it remained unpaid.
‘He said he’d jail you if you appeared before him again, didn’t he?’
‘He did,’ Dennis said, a huge smile on his face.
‘You’ve championed many green causes,’ she said, over the din of noisy protestors chanting go to hell CEGL. ‘But you seem to be devoting every waking minute to stopping the coal seam gas industry.’
‘This is the greatest environmental threat of our lifetime. Think about it. What other industry is licenced to steal and destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land? To deplete and contaminate our aquifers? To pump methane into the atmosphere and poison the air we breathe? To cause dermatitis, other serious illnesses and cancer? To destroy marine life? To scar a beautiful island? To use obscene amounts of power, converting gas to liquid? And to think those liars in the industry and greedy fools in government call it green energy.’ He pointed to the construction site. ‘Do you know what that is, Libby? It’s the end of a dirty line!’
The cameras panned back to Libby in the studio. ‘We invited the New South Wales Minister for Industry and the Federal Minister for the Environment to appear on the program, but unfortunately they had prior engagements.’
Before Sandi Carlisle moved in with Steve Forrest they drew up a set of rules. The main ones were that he wasn’t to publish anything that she might tell him about the cases the Paisley police were working on, and that she was to ignore anything that he might say that could be on the wrong side of the law. Two weeks later they had their first fight. She came home late one cold night, bubbling with excitement and blabbering about a major marijuana bust that she and Josh had made on the outskirts of Paisley. As she was babbling, Steve was writing the story in his mind. When she had finished, he asked her to take him to where the bust had occurred; when she refused, he got angry and they had a short, ferocious argument that saw him spend the night on the sofa. In the morning he was cold, sniffling and remorseful. He climbed into bed and snuggled into Sandi’s back, whispering his apologies. He’d hated their first fight, but their first make-up sex more than compensated.
The increase in truck movements around Tura began early on Monday morning and was hardly noticeable, unless you were Dean Prezky, who watched the big rigs like a hawk. Convoys of huge tip trucks carrying gravel dawdled through the town. Then there would be a lull before another convoy came through, carrying portable huts, generators, light poles and mechanical equipment. These were followed by Filliburton semitrailers bearing drill rig components.
These convoys normally travelled as fast as they could, often exceeding the speed limit. However, they were now crawling and this piqued Dean’s interest. The materials and the equipment they were carrying told him that Filliburton was about to drill fresh wells and he wasted no time following them at a distance that he hoped would not alert the drivers. Once on the open road, they increased their speed to the legal limit, but no more, and he had no difficulty keeping them in sight. After thirty-five minutes, the trucks turned into the property that the spiv, Norris Scott-Tempy, had ‘stolen’ from Bill Morrisey. Dean cursed, because he had known about the CEGL eight-well program and there was little that could be done to thwart it. On the way back to town he paid little attention to the buses, normally used to ferry workers to sites, travelling towards him; if he had, he would have seen that they were empty.
That night, as he pulled beers behind the bar, he heard the continuous drone of truck engines. His gut told him that something was going on and ten minutes after he knocked off he was on the trail of another convoy. Again there was no excessive speed and the drivers made no attempt to lose him. Just like earlier that day, the trucks entered the Scott-Tempy property and Dean let out a barrage of expletives at his own foolishness.
Driving into Paisley the following day, he was held up by trucks in front of, and coming towards him, all travelling at, or less than, the speed limit. It was as if they were trying to fly under the radar and, had they not normally travelled at high speeds, it would not have been so noticeable. He felt in his water that something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t fathom what it was. That night, in the bar he could hear the sound of truck engines idling through the town, but he was dog tired. Rather than go on another wild goose chase, he drove home, frustrated and annoyed.
Dean wasn’t the only one frustrated. Jack Thomas worked late into the night at the offices of the Fisher Valley Protective Alliance. Maps of the Tura estates were strewn all over his desk and on the floor beside his chair. His spy at CEGL had tipped him off that something big was about to happen, but he had no idea what or where; only the most senior executives knew the details. The ‘spy’ added that it was rumoured that the project had been named ‘Genesis’ and that he had used every combination of that name with the words ‘Fisher Valley’, ‘Tura’ and ‘Paisley’ to try to breach the company’s computer systems, but had drawn a blank and was worried that he might have blown his cover. Thomas had told him to keep his ear to the ground but to desist from further attempts to penetrate the computer systems - he was far too valuable to run the risk of losing.
Thomas knew CEGL would target what they saw as the weakest link, which meant that it had to be the Tura estates. He deduced that to maximise the number of wells, they would aim their attack at one of the larger properties, so any that were fifty acres or less or that were not covered by arbitrated or coerced access agreements, had been crossed out on his maps. He was still left with eight properties spread across the whole estate. The spies he had positioned outside the Filliburton base had told him that there had been little activity, other than two drill rigs being despatched to the Scott-Tempy property.
Thomas remembered being driven to desperation the last time Filliburton had been about to launch an attack on the estates, not knowing which property to defend. Filliburton’s intentions had been obvious then and their main base had been crammed with trucks and trailers carrying drill rigs, huts and equipment. It was then that the Tura resident known as the General, Mick Petheridge, had come up with the idea of blockading Filliburton’s gates, effectively stopping their trucks and equipment from being moved. Hundreds of cars, pickups, four-wheel-drives and semitrailers converged on the road outside the base and five days later Filliburton gave an undertaking not to proceed if the blockade was removed. This time was different; there was no build-up of trucks and equipment to blockade and yet Thomas knew that Project Genesis was about to be launched. If need be, he could blockade one T-intersection and defend six properties, but he hoped he would not have to take that gamble. It was just after midnight when he turned the lights off and headed home to a fitful night’s sleep.
Other than Frank Beck, no-one at Filliburton knew anything about Project Genesis and, while a few of his bosses had pumped him for details, he had, much to their annoyance, refused to even hint at what was occurring. The first move he made after completing his plan was to phone Moira to outline it and ask for unrestricted acce
ss to the Scott-Tempy property. She liked what she heard and, with her support, he immediately stopped the work gangs clearing the heavily-treed area on the property.
He also issued instructions to the supervisors to lay gravel tracks, but not install gates, to two more places at either end of the front of the property. On the night he planned to move, he had no intention of being blockaded and, if need be, he’d have the fence torn down so the convoy of the trucks that he would hide in the trees would not be impeded.
The transport company had been well paid and sworn to secrecy and their drivers, not knowing what was going on, had been bussed to Scott-Tempy’s flea-ridden motels and told that they could be required at any time. Beck would be in the lead truck with his best team, to make sure nothing went wrong and to allow him to supervise the unloading. His plan was perfect and, by the time the Greens and other radicals found out what had happened, it would be too late.
Chapter 30
Steve Forrest had also heard the rumours about CEGL making a move on the estates. He phoned all of his contacts, trying to ferret out more details, only to come up blank. He even phoned old Mrs Elliot, but she didn’t know anything. By Friday the rumours were growing stronger, but there was still nothing concrete to support them.
When Sandi arrived home just after 10pm, she was white and shaking like a leaf. Steve jumped up from watching the telly and took her in his arms. She was normally happy and bubbly and he’d never seen her like this before. ‘What’s wrong? What happened? Sit down and I’ll get you a drink.’