partnerships needed for success, page-4

DT, this is my take on things and please do not take my subjective view for gospel. By the way have a beer for with if you meet up with any drillers, would be nice if any information was attained, good luck.

Essentially the major concern for organizations lies with government permit and environmental impact assessment studies, regulatory compliances and license requirements.

"The Department of Mines and Energy has no intention of granting production tenures for underground coal gasification for at least three years. Underground coal gasification is a new technology, untried in Australian conditions, and it poses some potential problems, especially with groundwater systems. We will only do what's best for Queensland. In this case, we don't believe it's in the best interests of Queensland to grant production tenures for technology that is untried. It would have to meet the most stringent environmental standards."

If Queensland for example has chosen coal seam methane over underground coal gasification for the reasons listed above, well it would seem like an odd decision, given that UGC is not a new technology and hasn't posed any problems to groundwater in its trial phases. A behind-the-scenes policy decision would be news to me/us.
From memory the Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson has hailed both CSM and coal gasification as crucial to Australia's future energy security.

In short the Queensland Government has realized that in several cases it has issued rights over the same tenements to companies pursuing each of the technologies -- even though most say they are incompatible because the coal gasification process burns the methane that the CSM producers are seeking to extract.

And the Government now believes that in the long run the market will support the full-scale development of only one of the technologies, with cost and greenhouse emission levels from the production process the deciding factors. Unfortunately one always kick in and takes off prior to the other.

Remember the old Beta and VHS wars, similarly the same is occurring but this time legislation (government) seems to be push for one preference against the other.

Best of luck