APPROVALS MUST BE IN PLACE
According to the Beach Energy website, drilling of Haselgrove 4 is scheduled for the present financial quarter, Q3.
There looks to have been some work done already at site of Haselgrove 4, but when will drilling begin?
At the close of business on March 8, the Department of Energy and Mining website showed Beach Energy's Drilling, Completion and Initial Production Testing in the Otway Basin, South Australia, Statement of Environmental Objectives as being dated November 2013. SEOs have time limit of five years unless an Extension of Time is approved at the Minister's discretion. Perusal of PEL 494 in Licence Register did not find any gazettal of an EOT.
When an operator - Beach Energy in this case - has submitted an updated SEO for review and approval, a ( ^ ) symbol is displayed on the DEM website. As at close of business on March 8, that symbol was not being displayed.
Since 2010, Beach Energy has commenced work in breach of the Petroleum and Geothermal Energy Regulations 2013's Regulation 18(1) - (21 Days' Notice) a few times. Beach Energy has also commenced work in breach of Section 74 (3) of the Petroleum and Geothermal Energy Act 2000 on two occasions.
For one of these PIRSA - the predecessor to DEM - took the matter very seriously, issuing Beach Energy with a "notice of non-compliance and show cause" under step two of the 'Compliance and Enforcement Pyramid', and simultaneously a prohibition direction under step three.
During a speech to parliament given by Mining Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan on September 18, 2018, he included the following statement: "We want to be a government that is not ashamed at all to wield a fairly large stick to ensure that the operational standards that are expected and agreed upon up-front are adhered to and delivered for the benefit of not only local communities but also those operations. They cannot continue if they do not operate properly".
So, taking all of the above into account, the likelihood of Beach Energy risking its relationship with DEM, the Minister and its "social licence" by commencing drilling of Haselgrove 4 before all approvals are in place would or should be zero.
Anthony Maney,
Mount Gambier.
SAD END FOR PIG MARKET
This little pig went to market - well, he used to, but not anymore.
Many people old enough to remember are long departed, but as a junior auctioneer I was given the opportunity to auction the pigs at the old Gepps Cross yards in the late 1960s and early 1970s while employed by Dalgety's when the pig specialist, Ernie Henecker, went on long service leave.
Ex-North Adelaide football star Don Lindner was in his prime, Vin Argent was in charge at Elders with Bob West and I can't recall the Bennett & Fisher and Southern Farmers representatives - there was also Coles Brothers and another firm I also cannot recall. It was a hive of activity with up to 3000 pigs offered on many occasions.
Free trade agreements and imported pork products could not have been imagined and milk came from cows not cartons.
Politicians were mostly straight up and down and Thomas Playford had been Premier of the state for most of my early life.
Prices were fair - supermarkets were in their infancy and generally had a good moral policy toward farmers.
My, how things have changed.
Sadly the pig auction that started at the South Australian Metropolitan Export and Abattoirs Board yards in 1913 - more than 105 years ago - sadly wound up on March 12, 2019, at the now Dublin-based SA Livestock Exchange almost unnoticed. Vale to the pig auction. But, remember, as I was told by a long-serving and very astute agent in the 1970s - auction is the power of competition.
