Submissions to two parliamentary inquiries by the activist group ‘Lock the Gate’ should be disregarded after the group conceded its work was inaccurate and misleading.
The submissions include text copied (and unreferenced) from a USA study of the American shale gas industry, with the words “coal seam gas” substituted for the words “shale gas”. The study that this group has drawn its material from actually makes no mention of coal seam gas or the Australian industry.
Two parliamentary inquiries have been misled and this brings into question the integrity and credibility of those responsible.
In a September 16 press release, Lock the Gate’s President, Drew Hutton, said he doesn’t want to see the community ‘hoodwinked by phoney claims’.
The natural gas industry agrees. Lock the Gate submissions to both the Federal Senate inquiry into the management of the Murray Darling Basin and the NSW Legislative Council coal seam gas inquiry purport to include information sourced from a Cornell University study into greenhouse gas emissions from shale gas.
[mappress]
Source: APPEA, September 21, 2011;