The Queensland Government says oil is now flowing from early wells in the Taroom Trough. The towns sitting over it went through the coal seam gas construction boom a decade ago, and the housing record from that period is one every regional builder can use.

The Queensland Government says the Taroom Trough is now producing gas and 300 barrels of light oil a day from exploration wells, with explorers committing more than $1.2 billion to exploration and appraisal. In April, the government put output at 200 barrels a day.

For builders in the Western Downs and Maranoa, the barrels matter less than the people who might follow them. The basin sits under the same towns that went through the coal seam gas construction boom between 2011 and 2014.

That boom left one of the best documented records of what a resources surge does to regional housing. Rents moved first. New homes arrived late. Then the workforce left.

The CSG construction boom quadrupled the Surat Basin workforce in three years

Queensland Government Statistician’s Office data shows the number of fly in, fly out and drive in, drive out workers on shift in the Surat Basin grew from 3,265 in 2011 to a peak of 14,490 in 2014.

A year later it was 5,425.

The statistician links that climb and fall to the temporary workforces that built the infrastructure for three large coal seam gas to liquefied natural gas projects, then the shift to production.

That is the part builders tend to forget. The gas has been flowing ever since. The construction crews were there for around three years.

What is a non resident worker?

The Queensland Government Statistician’s Office defines non resident workers as fly in, fly out and drive in, drive out workers who live in an area temporarily while rostered on, with their usual home elsewhere. Its counts measure workers on shift in the last week of June, not the total workforce.

Rents in the gasfield towns rose sharply while prices moved less

University of Queensland researchers who tracked the gasfield towns found rents rose significantly in Chinchilla, Roma, Miles and Wandoan during the 2011 to 2013 construction period, while sale prices were less affected.

In Chinchilla, the average weekly rent on a three bedroom house rose from $300 in 2011 to $450 in 2013. Smaller towns such as Miles recorded rises of more than 150 per cent over the same period.

The gateway towns told a different story. In Toowoomba and Dalby, the researchers found little effect on rents and prices, because new housing kept up with demand. The towns with deeper building capacity absorbed the surge. The small towns could not.

Worker camps did not take the pressure off the towns

One of the most useful findings predates the gas boom.

When the Kogan Creek power station was built between 2005 and 2007, its 250 or so construction workers were said to be housed entirely in a work camp. Average rents for three bedroom houses in Chinchilla still doubled, from $145 to $290 a week.

The researchers point to the contractors further down the chain. The camps were largely designed for the gas companies’ own staff and their tier one contractors. Tier two, three and four contractors arrived needing beds the camps did not provide, and they found them in town.

The camps can be full and the rental market can still be under pressure. In June 2025, about three quarters of the Surat Basin’s non resident workers stayed in worker accommodation villages while on shift. On the Kogan Creek record, that share alone says little about what is happening to town rentals.

The camps can be full and the rental market can still be under pressure.

New homes arrived after demand had already turned

The building response did happen. It just took too long.

Land had to be released, developments approved, homes built and then marketed. In some towns, the researchers found that process ran longer than the three to four year construction window, and demand was already easing when the new houses came on line.

Some of the product did not suit the market it was left in. Housing designed for gas construction staff, such as four bedroom homes with four ensuites, became available only after the peak.

Building was also expensive. The researchers put that down to demand for construction skills from both the gas industry and the rebuild after the 2010 to 2011 floods, with home construction trades likely being drawn into the resources sector.

Chinchilla house prices halved after the peak

The Chinchilla figures show how hard the reversal hit.

The University of Queensland’s 2019 report on the town found the median house price rose 35 per cent to a peak of $405,000 in 2012 to 2013, then fell 50 per cent by 2019. Median rents peaked at $400 a week in 2013 and 2014.

Not all of the price rise can be put down to gas. The same report notes the growth was in line with the three years before the boom, and the researchers list low interest rates and low unemployment among the drivers.

The fall was another matter. Local agents described an oversupply of housing in Roma, Chinchilla and Miles, with 250 empty homes cited in Chinchilla alone. Some distant investors had kept financing new houses after demand had already dropped.

Lending then tightened. Interviewees told the researchers that first home buyers could not take advantage of the lower prices because banks had tightened loan requirements.

The Taroom Trough is at a much earlier stage

None of this means a repeat is coming.

The 2014 peak came from building the infrastructure for three export gas projects at the same time. The Taroom Trough is still in exploration and appraisal, and we have not found a published estimate of the workforce a full development would need.

There are also open questions about the resource. Energy finance analyst Kevin Morrison of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis argued in April that exploration had only just begun, that extraction would require fracking, and that the light crude found so far yields more petrol than diesel when refined.

The region is not starting from a quiet base either. The statistician counted 3,925 non resident workers on shift in the Surat Basin in June 2025, up 8 per cent on a year earlier, largely from gas maintenance and development in the Western Downs. Solar and wind farm construction has added to that since 2021.

In the small towns they are already a sizeable share of the population. In June 2025 they made up about 9 per cent of Chinchilla’s full time equivalent population, 16 per cent in Miles and 23 per cent in Wandoan.

The state plan names regional readiness but gives no housing detail yet

The government has put $11.9 million into a Taroom Trough Development Plan. Its stated aims include infrastructure planning, faster approvals, better land use and tenure arrangements, and strengthening regional readiness.

What regional readiness means for housing has not been set out. Neither the plan’s published aims nor this week’s statement mentions workforce accommodation or housing supply.

That is the question the last boom says matters most. The towns that coped were the ones where new housing could keep pace. The towns that struggled were the ones where it could not.

The Good Builder Take

A resource project’s life and its construction phase are two different things. The gas fields under the Western Downs are still producing more than a decade on. The construction surge that pushed rents up lasted around three years.

For regional builders, the signals worth tracking describe that construction phase: when investment decisions are made, how big the development workforce is, where it will be housed, and whether contractors below tier one are counted. Those details will say more about local housing demand than any reserve estimate.

The Western Downs has already run this experiment once, and the data from it is public. Whatever the Taroom Trough turns out to hold, the housing outcome will be decided by timing as much as by barrels.

We covered the fuel side of this story in Queensland’s oil gamble and what it means for fuel costs and in our look at what the $19 million fuel security budget buys. We will keep tracking the Taroom Trough as it moves from exploration towards development. Subscribe to our newsletter and listen to The Good Builder Podcast for analysis built for builders.

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Last updated: 4 November 2026

General Information Only: This article is general information for the Australian residential construction industry. It is not financial, legal or investment advice. Figures are drawn from the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office, University of Queensland research and Queensland Government statements, and are current as at the date of publication. Check current figures before relying on them for commercial decisions.

Author: TGB Editorial