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This article follows the coalbed methane exploration undertaken by an Australian junior company, Kimberley Oil, in the Lorrain Basin between 2000 and 2015. This company is proceeding by horizontal drilling in naturally fractured coal seams. These developments aim to produce gas in France and to reduce CO2 emissions by substituting local gas for foreign imports. The article falls within the field of political geology. It mobilizes the notion of ‘stratum’ developed by Nigel Clark to bring a social science perspective to the processes of subsoil recomposition in a context of transition. It studies the emergence of a new ‘stratum’ (coalbed methane), taking into account all the relations that constitute it and that are operated in the uncertain materiality of a volume. Through the study of these relations, it contributes to shedding light on the formation of new segmentations, both geological and social, and questions the political content of this promise of transition.