Santos told: Your gas is on the nose; get out
ANNE Kennedy has already sold her Santos shares “with bitterness”.
ANNE Kennedy has already sold her Santos shares “with bitterness”.
And the Coonamble farmer, grandmother and Country Women’s Association office bearer will today leave the $14 billion company’s directors and shareholders in no doubt that their coal-seam gas ambitions are not welcome in the rich black soil plains of northwest NSW.
Ms Kennedy has made the journey to Santos’s home town, Adelaide, to speak to a motion at the company’s annual general meeting to abandon the Pilliga CSG project, which the company says was part of an “anti-fossil fuels campaign” led by the Wilderness Society.
But Ms Kennedy says she has never been a member of the Wilderness Society and as yesterday’s suspension of CSG approvals for rival company Metgasco by the NSW government shows, community opposition to CSG remains widespread and is running hot.
“I need to let them (shareholders and directors) know that the farmers of the northwest are so deeply opposed to Santos’s gas project,’’ she said.
“It is our water, our lives, our business, our future. I want to let them know how organised we are and how determined we are to stop it.’’
Ms Kennedy says “credible” surveys conducted over more than one million hectares of farmland in her area had shown 96.34 per cent of farmers were opposed to CSG exploration.
More than three million hectares surrounding Santos’s Pilliga exploration area had been surveyed and the results were more than 95 per cent against, Ms Kennedy said.
Santos has shown itself to be extremely sensitive to community sentiment.
The company wrote to environment groups including GetUp and the Wilderness Society this week to demand they withdraw full-page advertisements critical of the company’s Pilliga CSG activities.
The Santos board of directors has unanimously advised shareholders at today’s meeting to vote against the resolution “That the Narrabri Gas Project in northwest NSW be withdrawn from Santos’s portfolio.”
The company said the resolution was proposed by a group of 161 shareholders representing about 0.0475 per cent of the company’s shares on issue.