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Hi Tracie,
Second point first - the published license is quite explicit and to drill deeper for exploitation of reserves found deeper would, I believe, require an additional site specific permission, addendum or variation to license terms. Such variations are probably not too hard to obtain, but do take time to get - possibly one of many reasons for COAG, EA and KCC agreeing to wait for more detail from COAG before proceeding further with consideration of the current applications. There is a separate license for each site PEDL249, 250 and 251 all seem to apply as identified by OS grid references and all have a limit of exploitation set at 1000m depth. However, it may be (I am far from 100% on this) that there is some clause, somewhere (I have not waded through all the legalese and cross references yet) within the license that refers specifically to exploration drilling and allows some %age margin for exploration only (not exploitation which is clearly limited to 1000m depth on all three licenses).
First point - provided they have the relevant addendum or variation to license terms approved there is nothing there to prevent them from drilling a test bore into all of these strata. They are clearly going for where the richest concentrations of gas are likely to be found - the coal seams - where they can extract the most for least effort and highest margin. This may explain the lack of detail on strata other than coal seams on their application (the other explanation is that we are all being deliberately misled, but I leave that to the conspiracy theorists because the information on what strata are down there is so readily available to anyone who looks that such attempted deception would be utterly foolish and entirely counter productive. These guys want to make as much money as possible with as little trouble as possible - deliberately trying to deceive/mislead in such an obvious way just doesn't fit).
Tom is right, and most informative, on what is meant by destructive distillation. Coal Seam/Bed Methane extraction does not involve destructive distillation and is the exploitation of the gas in its natural condition as it lies within the seams.
Be assured, you are not going nuts, I think all of us lay people are going boss eyed sorting out the fact from the fiction, the reality from the scaremongering, getting a better handle on local geology and the complexities of the licensing regime.
