GasFields commissioner Steven Raine sought information from a number of government, industry and research agents about naturally occurring seepages from Queensland’s coal basins.

Raine said there was a deal of information that should be made public to inform community discussion on the topic.

“The search identified a range of soil gas surveys undertaken during the 1980s and 1990s in the Surat, Eromanga, Cooper, Georgina, Bowen, Galilee basins which measured low levels of non-toxic methane gas ranging from less than 10 parts per million to 240ppm naturally occurring in the subsoil at depth of up to one metre,” he said.

“These soil gas surveys demonstrate that landscape gas seeps did exist naturally prior to the recent expansion of the onshore gas industry in Queensland.”

Raine said the focus of the project was to discover what data there was available to measure and monitor gas seepage from landscape seeps.

“I note there are other investigations currently underway into landscape seepages such as the Condamine River gas seep monitoring project by the Department of Natural Resources and Mines and Origin-APLNG.”