A dead canary in the hot, wet and filthy confines of a coal mine once meant a panicked evacuation. Natural gas was the most perilous of hazards, and a fall from the perch was an early warning of potential explosions, poisonous air or both.

This year, the rush has been back down the shaft as soaring prices and demand in Asia-Pacific have drawn BG Group and its international competitors to the world's largest resource of coal's unloved bedfellow: methane.

The charge is centred on what Australia's Science Agency estimates is 250 trillion cu ft of gas locked in vast Jurassic coalfields largely under the sweeping agricultural plains of southern Queensland. ... Read full article