australia pacific lng deal with china, page-4

johnny

Just to elaborate on your nod towards the NSW government.

I reckon the minders of the NSW premier would have put a copy of the following article in his folder of readings for today, with this bit highlighted:

"Queensland Finance Minister Rachel Nolan says the project will generate billions of dollars for the state's economy.

'It's expected to put $900 million a year into the economy of the Darling Downs and the south-west and another $770 million into the central west region, particularly around Gladstone,' she said."

(putting aside that someone needs to show that Qld pollie a map pointing out that Gladstone is on the east coast).

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/04/21/3198349.htm?section=justin

That is over $1.5b every year for at least 20 years being poured into the economies of regional towns and cities. That means massive amounts of non-government money finding its way into regional schools, hospitals, roads, community support, jobs, housing etc etc. That means thousands of new skilled good-paying jobs that young locals can aspire to without having to leave the region.

I am pretty sure that the NSW government will want to get themselves a bit of that action.

On another point:

Here's something that I am surprised has not been raised as an issue. There are 4 major LNG projects and 2 mini LNG projects proposed to go into Gladstone. There are obviously great advantages in having a single point of focus for the industry as it develops. But what about the risk of having all the eggs in one basket? What if Gladstone got hit with a major cyclone, or the entrance to the port was blocked (for whatever reason)? Surely it would be prudent to develop a second hub with some capacity to load up LNG ships? I would have thought the Port of Brisbane would be the obvious location seeing it is at the other end of the existing pipeline system that will run from Gladstone through the Darling Downs and then onto Brisbane. Newcastle is another obvious location but there would need to be hundreds of kilometres of pipeline put in to link Newcastle and the NSW csg fields into the Qld system. And of course there would need to be a change in thinking by the NSW government.