Around the Northern Rivers region, which included Metgasco’s stalled Casino CSG project, the National Party was returned to power with a significant percentage of the vote in the seat of Clarence, where some of the most aggressive anti-CSG actions were staged by activists.

Counting shows a 22% swing to Labor, but Nationals look like holding Clarence with around 30% of the vote. Likewise, they also look like retaining Barwon, around Narrabri, despite a 13.7% swing to Labor which promised no CSG in the Pilliga Forest.

The Greens generally polled just under 10% in both seats, backing up Metgasco boss Peter Henderson’s words to the Australian Domestic Gas Outlook conference last week that the thousands of protestors that dogged attempts to drill the Rosella-1 conventional well near Casino were out of towners, bussed in to disrupt the company’s plans.

Nationals did lose the coastal seats of Lismore and Ballina to the Greens, with swings of more than 20% against the party; however, these are more urban areas with little direct connection to the CSG areas further inland.

In Lismore, the National Party's primary vote dropped below 40%, while in Ballina preferences look likely to support a Greens victory.

Nationals are generally seen as supporting CSG for the regional jobs it can create, although the party also supports strong pro-agriculture policies that are expected to see CSG banned in some areas once a comprehensive gas policy is decided and settled upon.

For their anti-CSG stance, the Greens picked up three seats in the more urban, coastal areas and in inner Sydney, none of which are now able to be drilled.

While the Greens claim there has been a clear vote against coal seam gas across the regions that is not entirely true, with the party getting around 10% of the overall vote in many seats, par for the course at state and federal levels.

But there’s little doubt that CSG is a hot button issue across the state and will continue to be, given so many communities have declared themselves “gasfields free”

The job now is for the pro-development Baird government to settle on a policy that will pave the way for domestic gas developments, and placate so many diverse groups.

Labor leader Luke Foley had promised to block large areas of the state from CSG extraction, especially in core drinking water catchments, while the Liberal Party was more open to development now that the state’s Chief Scientist Professor Mary O'Kane had delivered her report outlining ways CSG would be safely developed.

A third factor, as the new parliament takes shape, is the intention of the minor parties in the Upper House, like Fred Niles’ Christian Democrats, which backed an immediate moratorium on new CSG exploration and production licences.

Greens intend to introduce a bill after the election to permanently ban CSG projects which should make for some interesting horse trading.

Before the election Premier Mike Baird said that both CSG and coal mining were vital to the NSW economy. Last year he announced a new ‘Gas Plan’ that was supposed to be a road map to development, promising more studies into the impacts of CSG drilling, blocking development in some areas, beefing up the powers of the Environmental Protection Authority as regulator, and securing gas resources for the state.

But there’s no sign yet that the plan has widespread support and it only takes a single toxic scare, like that suffered by AGL Energy at its Waukivory pilot project, to obscure a decade of safe production from AGL’s Camden project.

For the Baird gas plan to work the communities need to be on side, convinced CSG production and groundwater can co-exist – but all the shouting in the lead up to the state election suggests that will be a difficult sell.

With Santos having written down its Gunnedah Basin project near Narrabri and AGL reconsidering its upstream gas projects, it seems likely the flashpoint between industry and green groups will be around Casino.

Metgasco’s Peter Henderson told Energy News the swing to the ALP in some rural could be as much as an anti-privatisation vote, protesting the Baird government’s plan to sell off the ‘poles and wires’ of the state’s energy distribution network.

Nonetheless he is optimistic that now all the shouting is over Metgasco can start getting back to work.

“The thing now is that the returned Baird government knows the state needs a gas industry, they have to enact the gas plan and the report of the Chief Scientist, and get down to work on making that happen.

“They need to take control of the debate, which has been hijacked by the anti-gas Green lobby, and we’d like to work with the government to develop our resources, but we don’t know how quickly that will happen.”