w hy big sellers about ?, page-15

Muzzarati,

I've also heard concerns about the cost of extracting shale gas. I think David Knox, CEO of Santos was reported as saying that it cost about $4/gigajoule to extract, and I guess that's what Santos passed up the opportunity of staking out big areas of the Cooper.

I have also read that there may be a lot of pressure on LNG prices if the US, Canada etc start to export shale gas as LNG. There is an article in this weekend's Oz about it.
Gas prices in the US are in the $2 to $3 / gigajoule range at the moment. I think this has a lot to do with recent weakness in BPT's share price.

But it prompts the question, if they can produce shale gas profitably in the US for $2 to $3 / gigajoule, then why can't Beach do that in Australia? What is it about producing shale gas in the Cooper that is so much nore expensive than in the US?