Dirty Fracking Business Read Free Page B

 which usually resulted in an arbitrated access agreement, but this was time-consuming and costly.
    Donny’s job was simple: he just had to convince landowners to sign access agreements that would allow CEGL to come onto their properties and sink exploration wells. The first step was a phone call to arrange a no-obligation chat to explain how CEGL could assist. He had parameters within which he had to work and usually offered $1500 a year rental per well but could go as high as $5000. He could sweeten this by offering to replace and rebuild roads, tracks and fences on the landowner’s property. These offers were usually made with verbal undertakings that there would be minimal disruption and that, even if commercial quantities of gas were found, it would not necessarily result in the sinking of production wells.
    Land access consultants were instructed to negotiate with landowners separately and the offers made to obtain access agreements were often markedly different from neighbour to neighbour. An executed access agreement was nearly always accompanied by a CEGL-prepared confidentiality agreement that precluded the landowner from discussing the terms of the agreement with any other party. Donny informed the landowners that the confidentiality agreements were to protect them.
    Donny never really understood his popularity, mistakenly putting it down to what he saw as his quick-wittedness and intelligence. He wasn’t handsome but his face was sensitive, delicately boned and, in a way, pleasant and he was blessed with a smile that could light up a room. But what made him so well liked was his sincerity, that he was unthreatening, hardly ever raised his voice and persuaded rather than argued.
    Donny was far more successful than his colleagues and had negotiated countless access agreements on the Spurling Downs in Queensland. However, the landowners of the Fisher Valley were proving far harder to crack, having banded together to form a Protective Alliance, whose sole purpose was to make sure the gas companies did not get a toehold in the valley.
    This morning, his bitch of a boss, Moira Raymond, had put a rocket under him and the other land access consultants, telling them in her charming way, ‘You’d better pull your fingers out and get some access agreements signed or you’ll be drawing unemployment benefits next month.’ He was still pondering her threat as he got out of his car and opened the gate to old Artie Cleever’s property. He was determined that Artie, whom he had been working on for months, would finally sign an access agreement today.
    Donny had believed in CEGL and, even after he suspected that he was telling lies, the company assured him that they weren’t harmful and were to protect landowners. He didn’t know how it had occurred, but over the years the little lies had become big lies and the morals he’d once been blessed with had all but disappeared. Now, there was nothing he would not say or do to convince a landowner to sign an access agreement, but at night he was tormented and could not sleep.
    CEGL scientists said that the methane extracted was colourless and odourless but Donny had been at well-heads where the leaking methane vapour was visible and sometimes the others gases released with it stank to the high heavens. He had seen more than half-a-dozen farmers collapse after breathing in the fumes around well-heads and he had heard and believed the stories of those who suffered blood noses, headaches and strange welts on their bodies. Donny always drove around well-head areas with his windows tightly wound up and hated it when he had to make follow-up calls to landowners after gas wells had been sunk on their properties.
    While Moira Raymond had been mouthing off that morning, he had momentarily thought about telling her where she could stick her job but, as always, his generous salary, fully-maintained late-model car and large expense account managed to get the better of what was left of his