Commonwealth Bank: coal seam gas makes property ‘unacceptable’ as loan security

Elizabeth R. Cournoyer August 28, 2025

172 3 minutes read

Australia has declared Queensland with coal seam wells “unacceptable” for residential lending, which is gas fields to theirs. Queensland (QGC), which owns the Wells Chinchilla acreage, has insisted that its infrastructure has negatively affected their values now that it hosts. A letter from the Commonwealth, Australia, the presence of wells 240-hectare,, given for refusing the’ for a $500,000 bridging. The “fails the’s lending” the Chinchilla is “unacceptable” as owned or blemished and a tax bracket. “Valuation has coal seam wells land, making unacceptable for residential lending,” the.

Then QGC if they refuse.’ I wish that farmers were powerless to refuse to coal seam. ‘Sarah Ciesiolka, “QGC does the infrastructure that has had any of or any QGC infrastructure,” is a letter from its landholder relationships. “QGC has no direction to the rural area, the Surat Basin.”This letter said, “In QGC’s, a for finance declined the proposal.” In Commonwealth Australia, it is “profiles and serviceability” assessing. “In, we require a valuation to without of them and to our lending,” it.

Mark McGovern, rural economics from the Queensland of’s of, economics and finance, the case of the. If the wells are for bridging, it lends to McGovern.”As a resident, I wouldn’t meet the of the Commonwealth,” he said. The, who, he and his had “prisoners in our.” The to, “‘t it, ‘t lend it. It’s to us,” he. His she “ropeable” of the rejection after QGC had given public assurances of its values.QGC to pay for a valuation of the couple already had, one from the overturned its pre-approval.

The Chinchilla is that of Queensland’s gas fields, to refuse “the guinea pigs” for a ban in Victoria and strongly resisted in NSW. Anti-gas industry activists, a local property agency manager, and the president of the Real Estate Institute of Queensland (REIQ) all told Guardian Australia it was the first case they had heard of a bank refusing to lend because of gas wells on a property. Guardian Australia asked the Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, ANZ, and National Australia Bank if gas wells now represented a black mark under their lending criteria. A spokeswoman for Westpac said the bank dealt with properties “over a certain size” within its business/agricultural division, where “different lending principles [to residential loans] would apply.” The Commonwealth Bank stated that every loan application was assessed case-by-case. It did “not have a policy of excluding coal seam gas wells as acceptable security in our region and agribusiness banking.”

ANZ and NAB did not respond. The REIQ president, Antonia Mercorella, said it was concerning if the case represented “the start of a new trend where lending institutions were suddenly deciding they were not prepared to loan money to people wanting to buy these properties.” “We know that in regional Queensland, there are several properties for which this is going to create issues,” she said. “If they’re applying a blanket rule where they’re not going to give a loan to anyone who has these on their property, that’s obviously concerning because it would make it very difficult for those property owners to sell their property.

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“There are not too many buyers out there who cashed up and can buy without obtaining financing.” Lock The Gate organizer Phil Laird said it was the first known case of “something we have been concerned about for a long time … flat out whether a bank will lend money based on your security”. “It feeds into a story of people who are in the gas fields and who are trapped,” he said. “It will make it difficult for that guy to find another bank. What’s more, it will make it difficult for many people in similar circumstances to find someone, and it will cast a pall over their situation.

“There’s a lot of reasons why people need to move and change their property holdings, and when some other party who’s been imposed on top of you starts to dictate how you can conduct your life, your lifestyle, your succession planning, it becomes a real problem. “And no one recognizes this.” Laird said the support underpinning the Queensland gas industry represented “a government-sponsored model to transfer risk to the landholder.” “There’s something fundamentally wrong about this. If you did this to BHP, Lend Lease, or other large property holders, there would be hell to pay.”