Australian MP sets river on fire to protest fracking

An Australian politician has set fire to a river to draw attention to methane gas he says is seeping into the water due to fracking, with the dramatic video attracting more than two millions views.

Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham used a kitchen lighter to ignite bubbles of methane in the Condamine river in Queensland, about 220 km west of Brisbane.

The video shows him jumping back in surprise, using an expletive as flames shoot up around the dinghy.

“Unbelievable. A river on fire. Don’t let it burn the boat,” Mr Buckingham, from New South Wales, said in the footage posted on Facebook on Friday evening, which has been viewed more than two million times.

“Unbelievable, the most incredible thing I’ve seen. A tragedy in the Murray-Darling Basin (river system),” he said, blaming it on nearby coal-seam gas mining, or fracking.

Australia is a major gas exporter, but the controversial fracking industry has faced a public backlash in some parts of the country over fears about the environmental impact.

Farmers and other landowners are concerned that fracking, an extraction method un-der which high-pressure water and chemicals are used to split rockbeds, could contaminate groundwater sources. The Murray-Darling Basin is a river network sprawling for one million square kilometres across five Australian states.

But the industry has said the practice is safe and that coal seam gas mining is a vital part of the energy mix as the world looks for cleaner fuel sources.

Origin Energy, which operates wells in the region, said it was monitoring the bubbling.

“We’re aware of concerns regarding bubbling of the Condamine river, in particular, recent videos demonstrating that this naturally occurring gas is flammable when ignited,” the company said in a statement.