Good news friends – our campaign asking Alinta Energy to ditch its contract with fracking company AWE has been picked up by The West – you can read the article here.

The article’s not short on bloopers, not least confusing Frack Free Future (that’s us) with ‘Frack Free WA’ (another group’s Facebook page, not even the name of an actual organisation!), but it’s great to get that widespread coverage. Especially given The West is somewhat reluctant to publish stories on fracking lately.

Alinta is quoted in the article, and has also been responding to people on Facebook. Unsurprisingly, WA’s main gas supplier is being a little cute with the truth.

Here’s two misleading things Alinta is saying in response to our campaign:

1. They say they don’t undertake gas production activities and so aren’t fracking. That’s true, but misleading because we actually asked them to stop buying gas from a fracking company, and never told them to stop fracking themselves. Talk about dodging the question!
2. Alinta claims the gas it receives from AWE isn’t from fracking. Well AWE is producing gas from at least one fracked well, that gas goes into a production facility with all the other gas, and then gets sold to Alinta. So how can Alinta be sure it’s not selling us fracked gas? Fine to make that claim, just go ahead and prove it please.
   
   But either way, we’ve asked Alinta to break its contract with AWE because AWE has fracked in the Mid West, and plans to frack much more. So whether or not the gas Alinta is sourcing right now was obtained through fracking, the fact Alinta is paying AWE for gas means it is helping AWE fund its fracking operations. AWE has even said that’s how it plans to develop its fracking operations in the Mid West.
   
   You can read more about what they’ve said and what they’re doing in our Alinta briefing document.

We’re targeting Alinta because it sources gas from AWE, and AWE has been using the highly damaging fracking process to obtain gas in the Mid West against the wishes of local communities. They’re clearly feeling the heat, otherwise they wouldn’t be responding like they are.

Let’s keep up the pressure by spreading the word and getting more people to sign and share the petition.