Gas goes boom

THE good times have finally hit Roma, a once-sleepy Queensland cattle town of 7,000 souls. In 1900, when residents were drilling for water, they struck gas deep underground. Australia's first natural gas lit Roma's streetlamps, but they flickered out after just ten days. The gas igniting Roma 112 years later is something else. Coal-seam gas (CSG) is transforming Australia's energy market, and stimulating its robust economy. It has also inflamed an environmental protest movement over hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, the method of extracting gas from coal and shale. An unlikely alliance of farmers and green-minded city folk are trying to slow the boom down, if not stop it altogether.