Target $18.72, page-4234

The incontrovertible arguments, by the Editorial writer of the AFR 2.2.23, for opening up more gas fields' development & production in Australia, apply equally to coal.

Hopefully, this sanity will eventually prevail- & more thermal coal will also be produced in Australia for energy security :"Energy security is also about national security: rather than locking it in the ground, Australia should pump out as much gas as possible tosupport Ukraine and Europeand help defeat Vladimir Putin’s weaponisation of Russian gas"-from last paragraph below.

"Australia must get more gas out of the ground to avert disastrous shortfalls in the east coast gas market over the next decade that the Labor government’s extraordinary price gaps threaten to aggravate.

The Labor talking points suggest that there is no supply problem with gas in Australia: it’s just an issue of getting the greedy big Queensland LNG producers to divert some of their excess uncontracted gas away from highly profitable export markets to domestic customers.

But the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission’s 2023interim gas inquiry reportwarns of a much more troubling outlook than the Albanese government’s populist gas market intervention suggests.

Even under the most optimistic scenario for a fast as possible shift to electrification reducing demand for natural gas, the ACCC report warns that ongoing use for residential, commercial and industrial purposes means forecast production will not be sufficient to meet both domestic and export demand as soon as 2027.

A domesticsupply gap of some 300 petajoulesis forecast to emerge in NSW and Victoria alone by 2034. That’s more than half of expected domestic demand for natural gas this year. Averting shortages on the east coast – which will otherwise put upwards pressure on both domestic gas and electricity prices – requires more than 450 petajoules of new gas development for the domestic market, says the ACCC.

The ACCC report underlines the absurdity of the artificial “long-term supply shortfalls” the country faces amid the abundance of natural gas below the vast expanses of eastern Australia. Hence, it says that avoiding future shortfalls requires investment in new sources of supply.

Call to abandon moratoriums

It provides a long list of the basins with “possible and contingent” natural gas reserves that are currently connected or could be connected by new pipeline infrastructure to the east coast market. This includes the Bowen, Surat, Galilee and Cooper basins in Queensland, the Gippsland and Bass basins in Victoria, and the Gunnedah basin in NSW.

The ACCC recommends that governments reduce the “uncertainty” and regulatory “barriers faced by producers seeking to bring new gas to market”, including calling for NSW and Victoria to abandon their blanket moratoriums on gas exploration and development.

That points to the extended delays in approvals holding up dozens of gas projects – including Origin Energy’s Australia Pacific LNG venture in Queensland, Central Petroleum’s Range project in the Northern Territory, andSantos’ long-delayed Narrabri projectin NSW – which will be worsened by the freeze on new investments induced by the Labor’s “reasonable” price cap regime.

Yet despite the crucial role of gas as transition fuel in Australia’s journey to net zero, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen can’t bring himself to openly encourage new gas developments because of extreme green ideology and political fear of the Greens’ challenge in Labor’s inner-city seats.

One aspect of that is Labor’s ban on including gas in the National Electricity Market’s back-up capacity mechanism, despite energy boffins insisting that gas-fired peaking generation is essential to keep the lights on during the decades-long shift from coal to renewable sources of power.

New regulatory risks

Meanwhile, Labor is also adding to regulatory risks as Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’soverhaul of environmental laws and approvalsincreases the green tape burden on new gas projects. And the Federal Court’s ruling that the Tiwi Island people had a right under native title to be consulted over Santos’ Barossa gas project in the Timor Sea creates additional legal risk.

Getting more gas out of the ground would avoid the potential sovereign risk of draconian government intervention to tear up long-term LNG contracts with international customers in order to divert contracted exports to the domestic market.

Last November, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese assured his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida,that would not happen.

It would be disastrous for the $70 billion annual LNG export industry that Martin Ferguson, resources minister in a former Labor government, helped establish 15 years ago, and for the international reputation of a country whose prosperity rests on being regarded as a safe and dependable exporter of energy and other resources to global markets.

Energy security is also about national security: rather than locking it in the ground, Australia should pump out as much gas as possible tosupport Ukraine and Europeand help defeat Vladimir Putin’s weaponisation of Russian gas".

Apologies for formatting issues.