HERVEY BAY, AUSTRALIA: “I’m on my way to work,” Jack, the man
sitting next to me on the way to Brisbane said. “I work in the gas fields in Roma, two and half hours from the nearest
town. We have three weeks on and one week off. The company flies us home and
back to work. As a result of fracking, the gas industry is booming. The best
jobs are in gas, better than mining. It’s allowed me to buy a home for my
family in Hervey Bay and a pied-à-terre
in Sydney. Before taking this job, I had a construction business. This is much
better though and really no headaches. At the camp, I get up at 4:30, go to the
gym, work out, and then off to the drill site. I work until 4:30 seven days a
week. Since there’s nothing to do at the camp, except play pool or table
tennis, or watch TV, I’m usually in bed by 8:30. The meals are okay with a lot
of variety. The box lunches, however, leave something to be desired. Altogether
our camp has 200 workers, both men and women. We’re allowed to drink three
light beers or two glasses of wine at night. In the mornings, they’ll randomly
check us for drug and/or alcohol. In two years, there have been only two
deaths: one from heat exhaustion and the other when a hoist came down on a
trainee’s head. There are between 200 and 300 wells at our camp, each one producing
up to a million dollars of gas per day. The gas is piped from our camp in Roma
to the port in Gladstone. From there it is sent out to different countries for
refining. Although the companies are by law forced to advertise job openings,
it’s virtually impossible to get a job without knowing someone. Of course, there’s
a lot of talk in the camp as to whether the fracking is safe. Contaminated
water is brought up with the gas and siphoned off into ponds where it is
treated and returned to the wells. All seems good and well, except no one
really knows what’s happening down there and to what extent the gas is integral
to the geological structure below.”
