According to Honi Soit, the weekly student newspaper of the University of Sydney, the decision by Dart Energy (now part of IGas) to drill a CSG well in the close to homes and schools in St Peters in 2010, which was approved by the government, was not unlike the actions of then North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.
After film maker Anna Broinowski finished reading Kim Jong-il’s manifesto, On Cinema and Directing and heard about plans to drill in inner Sydney, she decided to seek the help of one of North Korea’s most prominent filmmakers to create an anti-fraccing propaganda film.
Broinowski spent two years seeking access to North Korea’s film archives, the paper reported, and she arrived in North Korea in July 2012, ready to learn how to create a politically powerful film about CSG to protect the Sydney Park where were daughter would play.
She said she was met with bewilderment about the NSW government’s treatment of Sydney residents.
“Here are these people who we say live under this brutal regime … but they were horrified for us,” Honi Soit reported her as saying.
She sought advice from the country’s top propagandists so, by “showing an Australian audience the ham-fisted approach to propaganda by North Korea” she could show how the population was “fed propaganda on so many mainstream media outlets”
Dart’s plans to drill sparked immediate concern when, in 2010, the NSW Department of Primary Industries admitted it was "uncertain" about environmental impacts of coal seam gas drilling in St Peters when it approved an application by Macquarie Energy, later swallowed up by Apollo Gas, which was in turn picked off by Dart, a spin-off of Arrow Energy.
According to the department’s approval document, the drilling operation could intersect with the Botany aquifer which lies under the St Peters site.
The department officer accepted the company’s claim that the well would be cased, but there was a level of uncertainty about whether the environment could withstand the impacts, whether they could be reversed or whether the drilling complied with water standards.
The department rated community concern over environmental impacts as "low" on all environmental issues, however in 2010 knowledge that CSG drilling was planned within 7km of the Sydney CBD was minimal, and there had been no consultation or even notification to community members or local councils.
Hundreds attended meetings and thousands marched the streets to stop the drilling plans, long before Broinowski completed her masterwork.
Plans by Dart to drill were ended in 2012 after Marrickville Council attempted to use its powers to drill in a quarry, and the licence was cancelled during the 2015 buyback.
The St Peters’ flashpoint eventually helped the people of Australia’s largest city to start anti-CSG groups, which until that point had been largely relegated to fringe groups and regional centres.
