“Last week The Singleton Argus published a story, both in print and online, that contained assertions made by a local resident about AGL’s activities in the area, which are wrong,” a company spokesperson said.

“The claims made by Mrs Barbara Brown that AGL ‘recently attempted to sneak in during the Christmas period and start fracking across the road from my Shiraz block’ have no basis of truth.

“As the reporter did not raise this allegation with AGL, we were not able to correct the facts before publication, which are:

“AGL has never, not recently nor in the past, hydraulically fractured (fracced) on the property mentioned  by Mrs Brown. We do not have the  necessary approvals to do so.

“The only approval AGL had was to drill a core-hole on the private property, of which AGL had an agreement with the landowner.

“This core-hole has not been drilled, and there are no current plans to do so. 

“The Browns know this as they attended a community information session where this was mentioned and were later contacted by AGL representatives.

“AGL has not breached any of its licence conditions in the Hunter.

“AGL endeavours to be as open to the community as we can, so claims we have snuck onto properties and undertaken work that we don’t have approvals for are misleading and untruthful.”