Linc Energy Fined Over Damaging UGC

Linc Energy, which was placed into voluntary administration in 2016, has had convictions recorded against it and been fined A$4.5mn ($3.39mn), the highest penalty ever imposed under Australia’s Queensland law for environmental offending, the Queensland Government said May 11.

“Today’s sentence sends a strong message that the government and environmental regulator is committed to thoroughly investigating and prosecuting allegations of serious harm,” it said.

Linc was found guilty by a jury of all five counts of wilfully and unlawfully causing serious environmental harm following a ten week trial earlier this year. It was sentenced by the Brisbane District Court May 11 for contravention of the Environmental Project Act 1994.

“Given that the company’s liquidators chose not to defend the proceedings, the prosecution case was required to be ‘strictly proved’ meaning that a significant volume of documentary evidence needed to be tendered, and approximately 80 witnesses needed to be called,” the state government said.  A number of former Linc executives are also facing charges, it said.

Linc operated an underground coal gasification (UGC) demonstration facility in Chinchilla, Queensland, between 2007 and 2013. The facility comprised five gasifiers and was pivotal to the company’s research and development program to commercialise the UCG technology.

Queensland banned UGC in April 2016, largely because of the negative impact of the Linc project.

In 2014 Linc was looking to extend its UGC trials to Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe. UGC as a technology has been used in the past in a small number of countries, including since the 1960s in Uzbekistan, but recent international pilot projects have not been extended, and one offshore Scotland's Firth of Forth was blocked along with development of unconventional oil and gas last year.