Australian gas: between a fracked rock and a socially hard place

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s response to the looming east coast gas shortage has been to secure a promise from gas producers to increase domestic supply.

Protesters rally against coal seam gas
in Melbourne, February 2016. 

In a televised press conference last month, he said:

We must continue the pressure on state and territory governments to revisit the restrictions on gas development and exploration.

But if an onshore gas boom is indeed in the offing, my research suggests that gas companies should tread carefully and take more seriously the social context of their operations.

Shell chief executive Erik van Beurden, one of the big players in the Australian gas industry, recently admitted that “social acceptance [for our industry] is just disappearing”, while Shell Australia’s chairman Andrew Smith last year urged the industry to be less hubristic and more willing to collaborate.

Read the piece on The Conversation by a Lecturer in Anthropology at The University of Queensland, Kim de Rijke - “Australian gas: between a fracked rock and a socially hard place.”