Why Australia Can’t Get at Its Huge Gas Reserves

In the tight-knit Outback town of Narrabri, the cold-shoulder treatment farmer Peter Gett has felt over the natural gas wells on his property has shown him that promoting Australia’s energy security comes at a cost.

The fifth-generation wheat grower opened gates and cleared tracks to smooth a path for exploration of the gas reserves beneath his farm. Seven years after allowing three wells to be drilled, he says enthusiasm for the gas project run by Santos Ltd., Australia’s third-largest energy producer, isn’t shared by the majority of his neighbors worried that extracting methane from between layers of coal could ruin the town’s precious water wells.