AGL Walks Away from Gloucester

After eight years of protests and poor results, energy supplier AGL has walked away from the coal-seam-gas industry in Gloucester.

AGL had high hopes that the Waukivory pilot would provide 15% of the State CSG needs by 2018 however, it has now decided that number is unobtainable.

Protests have been ongoing since the mine opened

"Unfortunately, the economic returns to support the investment of approximately $1 billion were not adequate" AGL said in a statement.

"Consequently, in the interest of our shareholders and customers, this is the most responsible course of action."

Groundswell Gloucester's Judy Lyford has been a strong advocate against the CSG industry and has welcomed this news.

"AGL were on a hiking to no where with the non-existent Gloucester gas fields because of all the inherit problems."

"We respect AGL's decision, now our focus is on the State Government and the collusion and culpability we fell has been happening for many years."

AGL's pull-out comes after Gloucester Council inquired to NSW Premier Mike Baird and asked to buy the CSG exploration license from the company back in November.

"Coal seam gas was a great concern to many people in our community, the lack of science and tech coming out from all over the world continuing unknown's was a real worry" said Gloucester Mayor John Rosenbaum.

"We need to move forward as a community."

"AGL, I'm hoping will be able to work with us and we're prepared to do that and I think the community will be at looking at the long term renewable energy source."

Ms Lyford says the focus now needs to shift to the conservation of the Gloucester environment.

"We to look at what's happening with the waste water, the holding ponds so there's a lot of work for AGL to do in that space."

"[Coal seam gas is] a shocking industry that has no guarantees of safety its been shown to be polluting."

"It's unacceptable and the State Government are really culpable for everything that's happened."

Meanwhile, Mr Rosenbaum is looking forward to getting on with the job.

"I'm looking forward to promote Gloucester (sic) without having this in the background."

"The beauty of Gloucester we have here, I can see the benefit is that now more people are assured that there's an industry [gone now] that they didn't want to live around, they can come and live here in this great environment we have."

"It needs to be protected for future generations."

Image courtesy of Ray Dawes, via ABC (LINK).