Beach Energy Limited, page-344

From AFR 17 Nov 2023

Bowen promotes need for more gas as Bass Strait falters

Chris Bowen has emphatically declared Australia needs to develop new sources of natural gas as a critical part of the nation’s future energy mix, putting the climate change minister on a collision course with Greens, teals and anti-gas activists.

In a blunt speech on Friday in Perth that follows 18 months of mostly muted public support from Mr Bowen for additional supply, the climate change and energy minister said his 82 per cent renewable energy target by 2030 would increasingly need gas for the remaining 18 per cent.


Alongside the fuel’s flexibility as a source of firmed power generation, gas would continue to be a feedstock and energy source for industrial manufacturers, he said.

Adopting a line that was repeatedly used by his Coalition predecessor Angus Taylor, Mr Bowen also acknowledged the quickening depletion of the Bass Strait gas field meant “new sources are going to be required to underpin reliability and security”.

Global energy giant ExxonMobil said in March that it expected the number of wells it operated in the Bass Strait – one of the country’s biggest sources of domestic gas – would halve by the middle of next year.