This is a bit off-topic, though not much. While Australia has loads of gas, if coal reaches pariah status, the PC ludites in pure sanctimonious mode would ban coal exports as Australias contribution to saving the planet. So LNG exports will take their place to keep balance of trade going, like, how will be buy all the lovely electronic toys if don't export something.
LNG will be a stop gap. In energy terms coal trumps gas hands down. Wind (ha ha), solar (ha ha ha ha) geothermal (ha ha ha ha ha ha), waves, tidal...stop it you are killing me. When the wings stop flapping and the public gets to realise they will end up paying for all these fanciful dreams the rot will set in.
Eventually we will have nuclear. There will in fairly short order be 1000 nuclear reactors (currently something 100-200) in the world in politically unstable Middle East, in seismically unstable Indonesia, China, India etc etc.. How delusional are Australians to think sitting in our little land boat that we think we will be immune to nuclear catastophe if it happens somewhere. Obviously if we are to play a senior role in that business we will need to play a part in it. There is nowhere to hide.
Returning to gas, ..anybody here negotiated with a gas supplier? Lets shut all the brown coal plants, starting with Hazellwood. Lets replace with gas. Terrific, and of course gas prices are reset based on petroleum prices (ha ha ha) oops sorry..that just snuck out. Ahem, so what do you think power prices will be based on resetting gas prices to Singapore Platts prices, say in 2015. ha haha...
So shares in low cost gas companies will be awesome until finally the blinding obviuous occurs and nuclear gets built to supply base load power, and gas gets used in peaking role. Then we really will have achieved an extremely low carbon foot print AND electrical energy we can afford to buy, and uranium we can sell along with LNG. We could end up with the ridiculous situation where we can't afford our "own" gas because we need the export revenue.
I apologise, you shouldn't have got me started on this topic. But take my word for it. All the big boys and all the serious companies in the energy industry know the end game, but in the meantime they'll just go with the flow and try and get the profit by getting as much renewable plant in as they can in the meantime. They know the country can't afford it, but what CEO selling windfarms is going to tout that. Always the best strategy to just follow govt dictate and public desires.
ESG Price at posting:
93.5¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
