IsakS - MEL has NEVER said that the Rosella well is an...

IsakS  - MEL has NEVER said that the Rosella well is an unconventional well.  It's a very standard conventional vertical exploration well.  The primary target is a conventional sandstone which flowed at 3MMCfd when last tested.  The fact that it will drill through tight sands and coal seams to get to the conventional target is normal.  Most O&G wells drilled onshore in Australia would do the same thing.  You and your mates are either deceived, disingenious, mischievous or deluded (take your pick) if you genuinely believe that this well is anything other than a conventional well.

The thing that differentiates "conventional" from 'unconventional" is the production technique - ie horizontal drilling or fracking.  That is the (not so) new drilling and completion techniques used to extract oil and gas from tight rocks which were previously thought of as uneconomic. Its significantly less expensive to produce O&G from conventional reservoirs than unconventional so every O&G company would prefer to develop conventional resources over unconventional if they are co-located.  Anyone who knows anything about oilfield practice understands this.  MEL has said that this is a vertical exploration well that wont be fracked, so there is NOTHING unconventional about  it.

Rosella is being drilled on a disused quarry site - hardly productive agricultural land

As for Nimby there are so many misguided errors in these posts that its hard to know where to start.

1.  Nimby didnt believe that AGL had CSG wells in a gold medal award winning Hunter Valley vineyard. You asked for a link, so here it is:  
http://www.smh.com.au/business/carb...gl-energys-evolving-menu-20150521-gh6cdp.html

2. Nimby quoted the discredited SCU paper on fugitive emissions and said that research should be done on fugitive emissions.  Well it has been - by CSIRO  "A CSIRO report has revealed fugitive emissions from coal seam gas facilities are ‘significantly lower’ than previously estimated."   Fugitive emissions from gas are already included in Australia's greenhouse gas audit system.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-07/csg-fugitive-emissions/5655738

Nimby - dont know how you managed to check the Rainbow Solar customer list so quickly.  Could it possibly be that you work for/ own the Rainbow Power Company?

If you really want to "do something" you should be fighting for gas development.  The IPCC said in its most recent report:

“Greenhouse gas emissions from energy supply can be reduced significantly by replacing current world average coal‐fired power plants with modern, highly efficient natural gas combined‐cycle power plants or combined heat and power plants, provided that natural gas is available and the fugitive emissions associated with extraction and supply are low or mitigated (robust evidence, high agreement).”

And just last month the US Energy Information Administration Agency that greenhouse gas emissions from the US power sector had reached a 27 year low in April.  This reduction is attributed to reduced carbon intensity in the electricity generation sector as a result of: use of more thermally efficient gas fired power stations, substitution of gas for coal, increased renewable electricity generation and increased nuclear generation.

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=22372&src=email

So - lets get on with drilling Rosella.