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The Director and Principal Engineer of Infinity Energy Consultants, Peter O’Neill, started out the energy industry in Coal bed
methane / Coal Seam Gas - fresh out of university in 1987.

“Did CSG even exist then?” most would ask. 

The answer is yes - and many of the techniques trialled and developed in those early days in the late 80’s by CB Resources and North Queensland Energy (NQE) were adopted and built on by the subsequent CSG boom of more recent years.

Some of these early pioneering CSG techniques later adopted by the broader CSG industry were:

  1. The use of large mineral type drilling rigs for drilling production wells (CB Resources / NQE owned its own Drilltech DH2
    drilling rig)
  2. Running production casing separately using a workover rig (NQE owned a Cooper workover rig)
  3. Use of air packages and diverter rubbers / heads for working on and cleaning out CSG wells (NQE owned their own air
    packages and boosters too)
  4. Use of plain water-sand fracture stimulation (more frac chemicals = more damage from our early experience in Qld coals -
    so water-sand fracs are the go - and yes we owned and operated our own frac spread too!). 

The motivation for NQE owning its own equipment in the late 80’s was the fact we were cost constrained – due to the heavy cost of the traditional oil field industry, especially mobilisation costs from oilfield logistics bases to our operations in the northern Bowen Basin. 
With the foresight of Mick Curtain, Ted Gurney, Jack Kennedy, Junior Jones, Scott Reeves, and Bob Bell amongst others we owned
and operated most of our own equipment to drill, frac, complete and workover our coalbed methane wells ourselves.

Since those early days we have run away from Coalbed Methane (Coal Seam Gas) several times to work in the convectional
side of the industry – only to eventually stray back to Coalbed Methane (Coal Seam Gas). In the intervening years we have
worked on convectional oil and gas projects in a wide range of areas including drilling, workovers and completions,
stimulation and production operations.