Turnbull to bang head with gas chiefs

Santos says there are plenty of gas reserves in Australia, the problem is state government restrictions on developing them.
Source: AAP
19 APR 2017 - 11:06 AM UPDATED 7 HOURS AGO

One gas industry chief due to meet with Turnbull government ministers says the promise extracted two months ago to stave off a domestic shortage is a "fake construct".

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has called the gas companies to Canberra on Wednesday to reinforce his message that a shortage on the east coast is not acceptable at a time when Australia will soon become the world's largest exporter of LNG.

At a previous meeting in March, he extracted a promise from exporters Shell and Origin to put more gas into the domestic market than they took out, with Santos expected to follow suit.

But ahead of Wednesday's meeting, Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher said the idea of being a "net contributor" was a "fake construct".

The Gladstone LNG (GLNG) project, in which Santos is a lead partner, was producing less than its expected capacity so "we don't have any spare gas".

If Santos did find spare capacity, it would be more than happy to sell it into the Australian market, he told Sky News.

Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said the GLNG project was taking gas from the south of Australia to export.

"That is increasing pricing across the country and it's also meaning that we've got a tightness in supply," he told ABC radio on Wednesday.

"We will be sitting down again today with the company and having that very frank conversation with them to say it is unacceptable."

When asked whether the government was prepared to knock heads together at the meeting, Mr Frydenberg said: "Absolutely, absolutely."

Mr Gallagher said the bigger issue was barriers to developing new gas resources, such as his company's planned coal seam gas project around Narrabri in northern NSW.

He wants the commonwealth to pressure state governments to ease development restrictions.

"There's plenty of gas in the east coast and in the Northern Territory, it's a case of being able to develop it," he said.

"Had we been able to develop the Narrabri project as we intended to back in 2010-11, there would be no gas shortage in the east coast today."

The agenda for Wednesday's meeting is also likely to include a proposal to allow exporters to buy cheap gas on the Asian market to fill contracts, freeing up Australian gas for domestic use, both in industry and electricity generation.

The idea has won the support of Labor, which says the existing system has gone "topsy-turvy".

But Mr Frydenberg said swaps were a matter for commercial negotiations between companies.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/04/19/turnbull-bang-head-gas-chiefs

From a quick google there doesn't appear to be many in depth articles on the gas "crisis".

But gas exporters like Santos, QGC etc. are exporting gas, but far less than what they had projected they'd be exporting when they signed all the export contracts around 2011(?) (a lot of the gas fields that they have mining leases for ended up having much less gas than what they thought was there, some even not being worth the money to extract the gas). Hence the gas exporters aren't willing to further reduce their already "small" export amounts.

So instead of using existing federal powers to force the gas exporters to reserve some of the gas being exported, Malcolm Turnbull is choosing to use this "crisis" as an opportunity act tough and make a "deal" with the exporters. This deal will more than likely involve relaxing restrictions on gas exploration in order to open up more gas for extraction from fields that were too difficult or sensitive to operate in and maybe this time some of the gas will be kept in Australia.

tl;dr big business fucked up their forecasts, fucking over the domestic supply of gas and are going to use this as an opportunity to steal more gas from the australian people

thatfatkid posted:

pro tip: if you want to get away with genocide, be british

good advice, thanks

roseweird posted:

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

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i think it's just that no one else really enjoys fat hate rants the way you do

i'm just mad because i was dumb and didn't realize 15 years ago that instead of doing a lot of work i could just do nothing and drink hummingbird syrup and declare any form my viscera takes to be beautiful by fiat

roseweird posted:

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

i'm just mad because i was dumb and didn't realize 15 years ago that instead of doing a lot of work i could just do nothing and drink hummingbird syrup and declare any form my viscera takes to be beautiful by fiat

if what you want out of life is to be a mentally ill fat person on the internet then that seems attainable for you. don't fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy

http://www.eurosport.com/rugby/faraj-fartass_prs459625/person.shtml