PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (Appea) has condemned a discussion paper released by independent think tank The Australia Institute, saying it dressed up ideology as analysis.

The Australia Institute report indicated that local businesses in unconventional gas regions in Queensland believed gas development led to deterioration in their finances, local infrastructure, social connections and labour force skills.

The analysis of mostly gas industry funded research also highlighted survey results by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation that found less than one-quarter of people living in unconventional gas regions approved of the industry and that only 6% thought it would change their region for the better.

“We can now look at what actually happened to the local economy as a result of the Queensland unconventional gas experiment,” said report author Mark Ogge.

“The results show that expectations of economic benefits largely failed to eventuate and most other industries reported being worse off due to the unconventional gas industry push into their region.”

The report claimed that unconventional gas created fewer additional jobs, noting that for every ten unconventional gas jobs created, some seven service-sector jobs were lost.

“When regional towns become service centres for the gas industry, existing businesses often lose their skilled staff, have to compete with inflated gas industry wages and face higher costs for rent and services,” said Ogge.

“Workers work long shifts in self-contained camps and have very little opportunity to spend money in town and companies usually bypass local suppliers. “

Ogge said the gas industry also preferred to employ skilled workers rather than local unemployed people, adding that these skilled workers tend to already be working in other industries.

“It’s rearranging the deck chairs rather than providing new ones,” Ogge said.

The report suggested that policymakers in the Northern Territory considering an unconventional gas industry should look to the Queensland example, warning that most of the economic benefits claimed by the sector did not materialise and that the industry caused “serious collateral damage”.

Appea CEO Malcolm Roberts said on Tuesday that the paper misrepresented the industry’s positive impact in Queensland, where more than A$60-billion had been invested developing a new domestic gas and export industry based on coal seam gas (CSG).

“The Australia Institute needs to remove its ideological, antidevelopment blinkers and accept the reality that natural gas is good for Australia,” he added.

“Queensland shows that the safe and sustainable development of onshore gas resources, in particular, can deliver enormous benefits to local, regional and state economies.

“This was clearly demonstrated again yesterday with QGC revealing that its investment of a further A$1.7-billion to develop its tenements in Queensland’s Surat basin would create up to 1 600 new construction jobs and business opportunities over the next two years.”

Roberts said a recent report released by the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science’s chief economist had also highlighted the economic importance of Queensland’s CSG industry.

The report pointed out that the “headline economic impacts of CSG development in Queensland, to date, are found to be net positive, and are attributable to increases in employment, income, output, consumption and government revenue”.

“A recent report by Deloitte Access Economics has also found that developing the Northern Territory’s substantial shale gas resource has the potential to create up to 6 300 new long-term jobs and generate up to A$460-million a year in additional revenue for the Northern Territory government,” Roberts said.