Oil and gas companies that want to carry out fracking on West Australian land will not be obliged to adhere to a specialised access framework with landowners, despite recommendations to Government to make it mandatory.

The WA Government has announced it will adopt 10 of 12 recommendations made to them in November by an Upper House parliamentary committee and designed to beef up the regulation of the state's growing onshore oil and gas industry.

The committee spent two years conducting a public inquiry into the implications of fracking, the practice used to extract onshore shale gas.

The recommendations include increased fines for oil and gas companies that commit offences.

The State Government argued a voluntary land access framework that was brokered by the petroleum industry and agricultural groups in 2015 already existed, and hence did not need to be made compulsory.

But the WA National's Member for Moore Shane Love said the framework, which sets perimeters for compensation and mediation during land access negotiations, must be mandated to "give it real teeth".

Under legislation, landholders do not have the right to deny access to an operator in the oil and gas industry, but an agreement is still needed for the company to access private land.

Mr Love said farmers had far less power in the bargaining process because if they rejected an operator's proposal, the matter could be dealt with legally - and few of them could afford that.

The State Government has also rejected a recommendation to form a statutory body to act as an independent arbiter for land owners and resource companies in land access negotiations.

A large portion of Mr Love's electorate, from Gingin north to Greenough, is considered highly valuable for oil and gas development.

'Suspicion' of government agencies' ties to industry

Mr Love said he supported the committee's call for an independent arbiter, which would be similar to the Queensland GasFields Commission.

"Fundamentally, what I find in the electorate is there's suspicion about the role of some of the government agencies who are both promoters of the industry and the regulators of the industry," he said.

"People don't feel a degree of trust in that arrangement.

"So this is about finding a body that people will trust to be there on the ground working with the communities and the landowners and the companies, to keep a good relationship between all."

Mr Love said the Nationals had been speaking with the Minister for Mines and Petroleum, Bill Marmion, about strengthening landholder's rights and he believed they were making headway.

"I thought this report might have been the place where he could have put those measures in place, but he's chosen not to do so," he said.

But he said the National Party had moved to distance themselves from the State Government's official response.

Mr Marmion was contacted for comment, but his office said they were confined to the comments made in the State Government's response to the inquiry.

The State Government has supported a call to prohibit the addition of types of chemicals, including benzene, being used in the fracking process.

Conservation Council WA director Piers Verstegen said the report and the Government's response "papers over most of the problems".

He said countries around the world were banning gas fracking and that WA's regulatory and policy arrangements on the practice were "completely wrong" and "out of step with the sentiments of the communities that would be host to these kinds of activities".

Editor's note (18/03/16): This story has been amended to correct an earlier report that the parliamentary committee had recommended landowners be given the right to veto fracking on their land, and that the oil and gas industry be obliged to negotiate with landowners. The recommendation was in fact to mandate a specialised access framework between landowners and companies that wish to carry out fracking.

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