Santos is about to begin exploration for coal seam gas in the Gunnedah basin and has interests in a number of petroleum exploration licences.

Santos’ senior staff geologist Tom Lonergan said the search was “purely for coal seam gas”, and the site had already fielded a number of inquiries early on day one of the field days from landholders in the basin.

He said Santos was aware of issues between basin landholders and coal exploration but his company’s interest lay at deeper levels of the soil structure than the coalminers.

“There are two things you need (while searching) for coal seam gas,” he said.

“Coal and gas in the coal.”

He said Santos’ exploration was only in its early days and it had just started exploring for potential fields.

“We’re halfway into our first bore hole,” Mr Lonergan said.

“We’re always hopeful of making some

discoveries.

“There are some decent coal seams (in the basin) and that gives us hope.”

Mr Lonergan said the test holes would be seeking gas at levels of 300m to more than 1000m below the soil surface.

“That sort of coal is the sort we are chasing,” he said.

Seismic surveys will also play a role in Santos’ search for gas using sound waves transmitted from trucks and collected by small microphones known as geophones.

Santos stated in an information sheet handed out at the field days that it would undertake about 500km of seismic lines and expects these to take between six and eight weeks.

It said that only 20 to 30km of the test lines would be done on farmland while the remainder would be run along existing roads and tracks.

Santos had an example of a gas well head on

display at the site providing an example to interested parties the minimal footprint as gas well leaves once online.