Vol. 38, No. 3, Summer 2016 44 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY By Martin Espig and Kim de Rijke I n Queensland, Australia’s north-eastern state, unconventional coal seam gas (CSG) reserves have been developed at an unprecedented scale and pace over the last decade. Connected to three major liqueied natural gas (LNG) facilities on the coast some 500 km away from the inland gas ields, these projects form part of the current “global gas revolution” and Australia’s vision to become the world’s largest LNG exporter. To date, approximately 7,000 production wells have been drilled within the state’s rural agricultural regions, but the ultimate number of wells in Queensland alone may reach over 40,000. To depressurize targeted coal seams and thereby mobilize trapped gas within them, large amounts of brackish ground- water need to be removed. Companies also utilize controversial stimulation techniques such as hydraulic fractur- ing to improve gas lows in some wells. Similar to shale gas developments, CSG NAVIGATING COAL SEAM GAS FIELDS: ETHNOGRAPHIC CHALLENGES IN QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA extraction has therefore been the focus of heated debates over intensifying land use competition and its (potential) environ- mental, social, and economic impacts. Signiicant factors in these disputes are the industry’s geographically-extensive infrastructure requirements in denser populated residential and groundwater- dependent agricultural areas. As such, CSG developments transcend the his- torically clearer boundaries of resource extraction sites and have sparked social controversies. Since 2012, we have conducted research into these controversies through ongoing ethnographic ieldwork primarily in the Darling Downs region of Southern Queensland. Our interlocutors include lo- cal landholders, town residents, anti-CSG activists, government oficials, Indig- enous people, interest group representa- tives, natural scientists, and gas industry professionals. Entering this contested and frequently polarized arena has posed a number of challenges. Queensland’s CSG ields span geographically vast and socially di- verse areas, with varying land uses and multiple municipalities. The Western Darling Downs—the “energy capital of Queensland” and focus region of our research—alone spans an area of some 38,000 km 2 , is home to over 32,000 people, and hosts numerous intercon- nected operational and proposed gas ields. However, the stories of CSG neither start nor end in the immediate extraction locality. They are also written hundreds of kilometers away in company headquarters, scientiic institutions, and departmental ofices. How should the ethnographer engage with this complex- ity? We opted for a multi-sited approach and work with people from diverse geographical and social backgrounds and with various roles and perspectives related to CSG. Field sites therefore vary from, for example, farms in the gas ields to community meetings, protest rallies, public hearings, and industry workshops. This approach revealed signiicant sociopolitical complexities that cau- tion against oversimpliied conceptual categorizations, such as social impact and community. Barry (2006) usefully proposed a view of complex resource