Waring: This video contains explicit language.
It seems methane gas bubbling up from a river bed can be set on fire, as the above video demonstrates.
Jeremy Buckingham, a Greens party member of Australia’s New South Wales parliament, uploaded the video to his official Facebook page.
The video shows Buckingham leaning over the edge of a boat and using a gas lighter to ignite the surface of the Condamine River in southwestern Queensland.
Buckingham can be seen jolting back from the sudden ignition of the methane gas. “I was shocked by force of the explosion,” wrote Buckingham in the caption.
After igniting, the fire continues to burn, fueled by the methane bubbles rising from the river bed.
Buckingham wrote in the caption that “gas first started bubbling though the river shortly after the coal seam gas industry took off in the area. Since then the volume of gas bubbling through the river has massively increased and has spread along the river.”
Calling the gas leak “a tragedy,” Buckingham insists that this is “the future of Australia if we do not stop the frackers.”
