Let me just explain this so we all understand this fracking technology in the petroleum industry.
I have spent half my life drilling both exploration wells and development wells from Western Province to Hela to SHP to Gulf and Central Province. And globally Australia, Japan, Indonesia, Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, South Africa, Mozambique to name some in the last 23 years.
On my watch as supervisor or operations geologist or project geologist on those wells I have never ever been involved in any fracking technology use in PNG because PNG productive and proven reservoirs don't need fracking technology.
Fracking is only confined to countries who explore and produce from shale gas. We in PNG don't explore for shale gas or coal bed methane.
The only exception to any fracking is acidising the limestone reservoir in Triceratops exploration well 1 where test results were not encouraging so company tried to improve but did not work.
The Elk 1 discovery was one of the best wells I ever drilled. We penetrated the reservoir at midnight and the pressure was so high the well kicked and flowed which caused a local tremor and people at Wabo felt it as well.
Those are in no way connected to current 7.5 magnitude earthquake. The earthquake epicentre is at 35km depth deep beneath the earth's brittle crust, it is at the brittle/ductile transition zone. No surface fluids or oil or gas can reach that depth. It's too hot and pressure is astronomically high.
All our exploration wells, oil and gas wells from Western Province to Hela to SHP to Gulf and Central Province are down to 3km or less.
These FB geologists should have some patience to read and understand the subject matter and reflect that properly to our PNG mining petroleum industry practices. Our people deserve the best of our services and advise at this time