Jeremy Buckingham says scientists ‘making excuses’ for CSG industry after footage shows him touching off sheet of flame on the Condamine river

The CSIRO has defended its independence after a Greens MP, whose footage of burning methane on a Queensland river went viral, accused the government-funded research body of “making excuses” for the coal seam gas industry.

Jeremy Buckingham, a member of the New South Wales parliament’s upper house, posted the video, which showed him lighting the surface of the Condamine river with a barbecue lighter and sending flames licking around the boat, on his Facebook page on Friday. By Sunday it had been shared 13,000 times and had 2.2m views.

The CSIRO began studying methane seeps in 2012 in the Condamine river, which is near Chinchilla, about 300km west of Brisbane, after locals reported seeing bubbles. The gas is most evident at an area called Pumphole where the video was filmed. It is just over 5km from the gas field but there is a gas well within 900m, according to Buckingham.

Speaking to Guardian Australia, Buckingham said it was “implausible” that the gas flow was not linked to the coal seam gas industry, which expanded in the area in 2011.

“It would be the most remarkable coincidence that the very thing that we warned would happen has happened in the middle of a gas field and it’s totally unrelated,” he said.

But Professor Damian Barrett, research director of the CSIRO’s onshore gas programme, insisted it was “unlikely” that the gas seep was linked to fracking in the region.

Barrett said there were naturally occurring fissures in the rock in that part of the Darling Downs where, owing to the coal beds being less than 100m from the surface, methane had been known to leak out. At least four of those fissures are in a 3km stretch of the Condamine river, including Pumphole.

“The presence of the industry there has not caused that crack to occur or that fault to occur, it’s been there for aeons,” Barrett told Guardian Australia. “The gas has probably been coming to the surface there for as long as people have been there.”

Barrett said the amount of gas seeping in that area had markedly increased in the past 12 months, a trend he said could be caused by a shift in sediment from the river bed, which would mean the gas was less dispersed, or could be the result of water that rushed into the alluvial aquifer during the 2011 Queensland floods slowly depleting, which would release the pressure and allow more methane to come to the surface.

Barrett said evidence from the CSIRO’s study suggested it was “unlikely” the increased gas seepage was caused by the coal seam gas industry.

“It’s not to rule it out completely, but we don’t see a direct connection, a direct relationship, between what’s happening on the gas fields up to this point in time and what’s happening in the river,” he said.

“The nature of the way those coals are laid down … those beds are discontinuous, they don’t tend to form natural connections.

“There could be a connectivity, a pathway there, but if there was it would be highly unusual.”

Barrett said it was not an “unusual occurrence” for that part of the river to hold a flame if it was not flowing, although lighting it was “not necessarily an advisable thing to do”, and said there were a number of places in the world – notably the Eternal Flame Falls in Shale Creek Preserve in upstate New York – that could hold a flame for most of the year.

Origin Energy, one of three energy companies to have coal seam gas wells in the region, also released a statement saying the gas was naturally occurring and posed no risk to public safety provided people use “common sense”.

However, Buckingham said the flame on the Condamine river has previously winked out quickly but this time remained alight for more than an hour.

He said farmers in the region had only reported seeing bubbles in the river since 2012, which did not fit with the explanation of a naturally occurring methane seep.

“The CSIRO might not have the causation yet but it is a remarkable correlation that within 12 months that the marked expansion of that gas field [in 2011] the river closest to that gas field starts bubbling,” he said.

“That particular arm of the CSIRO is funded by the industry and I believe that they are making excuses for the industry that they have let off the leash.”

Barrett said that was untrue.

“The CSIRO takes very seriously and regards it as very important that its research is entirely independent and we have mechanisms in the organisation to make sure that the research we do is independent and can be trusted,” he said.