The insanity of destroying ecologically sensitive bush habitats to build wind turbines to save the environment was again laid bare this week.
We don’t really need wind farms. We have huge volumes of gas under our feet to meet our energy needs for generations to come.
The value of our gas assets was reset this week at an astonishing $489.7 billion. The tally was based on volumes calculated by Geoscience Australia and current market prices. In the Surat Basin alone, gas is worth $293.8 billion.
The good news is that the untapped gas in Queensland will deliver a $45.6 billion royalties bonanza for the State Government in the next two decades.
So let us answer the call, drill baby, drill! Our future prosperity demands it.
We need the royalties more than ever to repair the standard of living declines in the lost Labor years under the leadership of Steven Miles and Annastacia Palaszczuk.
And the groups with their hands out for never-ending welfare top-ups should welcome news of a gas royalties windfall.
Added to the royalties from our wonderful coal mines, there may just be enough revenue to repair our decrepit schools, improve hospitals and to continue the ambitious public housing rollout handled so admirably by Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie and Housing Minister Sam O’Connor.
Gas is not just about energy security. Underpaid police, nurses, teachers, firefighters and other public servants should also be jumping for joy at news of a substantial gas royalties dividend.
Or will public servants allow the ideological zealots in the ALP and the Greens to block gas exploration and rob them of potential pay rises?
Labor’s attempts to strongarm Queensland into exclusively using renewables to power data centres is another attack on our economic sovereignty. No royalties are paid on renewables. We risk losing billions.
There is another compelling reason to develop our own gas fields, says David Spring, the chief of Eastern Gas, a gas exploration minnow now drilling a gas-bearing coal seam 9km west of Miles.
“The Australian Energy Market Operator says gas production from legacy fields in southern states is forecast to decline 46 per cent over the next five years. There will be more pressure on Queensland to pick up the slack,” he told me.
Eastern Gas is using bold new techniques to turn gas exploration in this state upside down.
The firm is initially drilling down 425m to a gas-bearing coal seam up to six metres thick. Instead of simply passing through the coal, the well will then turn and travel along it, Spring explains.
“Historically, most coal seam gas wells in Queensland’s Surat and Bowen basins have been drilled straight down through the coal seams,” he said. “Increasingly, gas companies are using more sophisticated drilling techniques that allow the well to turn underground and travel along the coal seam.
“Instead of a well passing through a relatively small section of gas-bearing coal, it can run along the seam for hundreds or even thousands of metres. This gives the well access to much more gas-bearing coal and can help producers reach gas that was previously too difficult or expensive to extract.
“Arrow Energy, for example, has used angled and more complex wells in Queensland to increase the amount of gas-bearing coal reached by each well. This reflects a broader shift away from simply drilling more vertical wells towards designing wells to follow the geology underground.”
The new buzzwords are directional drilling. Drilling horizontally along the seam can release additional gas, turning a marginal gas resource into a commercially viable one.
There are 10,000 gas wells in Queensland, most conventional vertical wells.
Spring knows his way around a gas field. He has had 40 years in petroleum as a geoscientist, exploration leader and senior executive across Australia, North America, Europe, the Middle East, South America the Caribbean and North Africa. He began as a geophysicist with Esso Australia exploring the Cooper Basin.
He spent more than a decade with BHP Petroleum in Australia and overseas.
Four years with Maersk Oil and management responsibility for the El Merk gas development in Algeria later led Mubadala Petroleum’s global exploration portfolio in the UAE.
In 2015 Spring joined Senex Energy, partly owned by Gina Rinehart, to begin exploring opportunities in the Cooper and Surat Basins.
The ACCC’s latest “Gas inquiry interim report, June 2026” shows Queensland exports roughly 90 per cent of the gas produced in the state.
At home, gas is used to provide energy for fertiliser and explosives manufacturing and alumina and minerals processing.
The gas industry certainly attracts some characters.
Eastern Gas raised $5.5 million and joined the ASX in February. Its biggest shareholder is Pure One Corporation, forme–rly Pure Hydrogen, which is chaired by former Northern Territory chief minister Adam Giles, one of Mrs Rinehart’s lieutenants.
Spring engaged Viv Oldfield’s company, Silver City Drilling, to do his drilling.
Oldfield, a cattleman, is Australia’s biggest private landholder and owns several properties with a total area of 78,000sq km, roughly the area of Scotland.
The insanity of destroying ecologically sensitive bush habitats to build wind turbines to save the environment was again laid bare this week.
We don’t really need wind farms. We have huge volumes of gas under our feet to meet our energy needs for generations to come.
The value of our gas assets was reset this week at an astonishing $489.7 billion. The tally was based on volumes calculated by Geoscience Australia and current market prices. In the Surat Basin alone, gas is worth $293.8 billion.
The good news is that the untapped gas in Queensland will deliver a $45.6 billion royalties bonanza for the State Government in the next two decades.
So let us answer the call, drill baby, drill! Our future prosperity demands it.
We need the royalties more than ever to repair the standard of living declines in the lost Labor years under the leadership of Steven Miles and Annastacia Palaszczuk.
And the groups with their hands out for never-ending welfare top-ups should welcome news of a gas royalties windfall.
Added to the royalties from our wonderful coal mines, there may just be enough revenue to repair our decrepit schools, improve hospitals and to continue the ambitious public housing rollout handled so admirably by Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie and Housing Minister Sam O’Connor.
Gas is not just about energy security. Underpaid police, nurses, teachers, firefighters and other public servants should also be jumping for joy at news of a substantial gas royalties dividend.
Or will public servants allow the ideological zealots in the ALP and the Greens to block gas exploration and rob them of potential pay rises?
Labor’s attempts to strongarm Queensland into exclusively using renewables to power data centres is another attack on our economic sovereignty. No royalties are paid on renewables. We risk losing billions.
There is another compelling reason to develop our own gas fields, says David Spring, the chief of Eastern Gas, a gas exploration minnow now drilling a gas-bearing coal seam 9km west of Miles.
“The Australian Energy Market Operator says gas production from legacy fields in southern states is forecast to decline 46 per cent over the next five years. There will be more pressure on Queensland to pick up the slack,” he told me.
Eastern Gas is using bold new techniques to turn gas exploration in this state upside down.
The firm is initially drilling down 425m to a gas-bearing coal seam up to six metres thick. Instead of simply passing through the coal, the well will then turn and travel along it, Spring explains.
“Historically, most coal seam gas wells in Queensland’s Surat and Bowen basins have been drilled straight down through the coal seams,” he said. “Increasingly, gas companies are using more sophisticated drilling techniques that allow the well to turn underground and travel along the coal seam.
“Instead of a well passing through a relatively small section of gas-bearing coal, it can run along the seam for hundreds or even thousands of metres. This gives the well access to much more gas-bearing coal and can help producers reach gas that was previously too difficult or expensive to extract.
“Arrow Energy, for example, has used angled and more complex wells in Queensland to increase the amount of gas-bearing coal reached by each well. This reflects a broader shift away from simply drilling more vertical wells towards designing wells to follow the geology underground.”
The new buzzwords are directional drilling. Drilling horizontally along the seam can release additional gas, turning a marginal gas resource into a commercially viable one.
There are 10,000 gas wells in Queensland, most conventional vertical wells.
Spring knows his way around a gas field. He has had 40 years in petroleum as a geoscientist, exploration leader and senior executive across Australia, North America, Europe, the Middle East, South America the Caribbean and North Africa. He began as a geophysicist with Esso Australia exploring the Cooper Basin.
He spent more than a decade with BHP Petroleum in Australia and overseas.
Four years with Maersk Oil and management responsibility for the El Merk gas development in Algeria later led Mubadala Petroleum’s global exploration portfolio in the UAE.
In 2015 Spring joined Senex Energy, partly owned by Gina Rinehart, to begin exploring opportunities in the Cooper and Surat Basins.
The ACCC’s latest “Gas inquiry interim report, June 2026” shows Queensland exports roughly 90 per cent of the gas produced in the state.
At home, gas is used to provide energy for fertiliser and explosives manufacturing and alumina and minerals processing.
The gas industry certainly attracts some characters.
Eastern Gas raised $5.5 million and joined the ASX in February. Its biggest shareholder is Pure One Corporation, forme–rly Pure Hydrogen, which is chaired by former Northern Territory chief minister Adam Giles, one of Mrs Rinehart’s lieutenants.
Spring engaged Viv Oldfield’s company, Silver City Drilling, to do his drilling.
Oldfield, a cattleman, is Australia’s biggest private landholder and owns several properties with a total area of 78,000sq km, roughly the area of Scotland.