Oh yes, the deals done that included huge concessions of taxes cost the people and left the cartel laughing all the way to the bank. The industry denial you quoted is their usual misdirection. The extractors and their proxies AEP and APPEA are well funded shameless spinmasters.
They are such fine corporate citizens looking after the interests of the less fortunate that they have been warning of gas shortages and hinting at pensioners in unheated flats next winter on and off for a decade. At the same time they play hardball to resist any kind of reservation. The real game is to open up new fields in VIC and NSW.
Be aware that a large proportion of the NG consumed domestically in WA , Qld and NT includes NG used to produce LNG for export. While gas used for home heating or electricity generation delivers more direct benefit to Aussie homes. If there was no export industry what is reported as domestic consumption would fall in Qld and WA. Note the decision to include the export processing as a domestic need is a decision of the government statisticians who assisted to prepare the report. https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/future-gas-strategy/how-australian-gas-used-today
Of course any measure would have to be analysed by those who know far more than I do about these things.
But if the issue is how to get gas producers to supply more into the Australian market as a priority before exporting, then I offered some ideas that would not involve the Gov coming in and seizing the gas and possibly breaking international contracts.
That would be a clear signal of sovereign risk to investors and buyers overseas.
Some might see this as a pointless choice sending good money into an industry with no future - how ever it has been funded. Smarter options for any new or redirected spending could be used to reduce the demand/need for gas, and accelerate the transition away from gas. Scope includes subsidising conversion of gas homes, supporting home and end of street/community batteries, simplifying and encouraging V2G/V2G connection, and …. Nation building projects necessary for the future include firming storage systems (pumped storage) and grid management improvements are all contenders. Not the only ways, just some.
I can read the first few lines that make the claim, the rest is paywalled. I would be interested to know how much of our gas they are selling, how this is known and what effect it really has on our market. Without knowing that you cannot know if the concept is even feasible or useful and that is before getting to questions of is it legal or possible without major international repercussions.
According to a number of sources about 38 Million tonnes of it. Though China seems to be even bigger as a re-exporter. One write up that reports the numbers is linked here.
The west coast gas is cheaper because the WA government ensured a cheap supply of gas when the rest of Australia didn’t bother about the future. We have enough gas for Australian consumption but we pay top price and only have the gas remaining after overseas contracts are completed. It’s a crock really.
Looking at how little the people of Oz got from the coal and then gas export booms you have to wish for a government like Norway. Norway had a huge boom in hydrocarbon resources in the 1990s and now not only do they have adequate local supply but a 1.6 trillion dollar (US) pension fund. What did we get for the long term compared with what we could have got?
We got more millionaires and billionaires and less social services. Governments complain about the cost of pensions and the dole and I can’t see any government changing the status quo unless both major parties agree on change which will never happen. Can’t lose those dividends perhaps?
Oh, I don’t know. How about a Sovereign wealth fund built on the boom in mining, rather than oil which Australia has little of, or gas which is fairly recent. Coal is covered by royalties, and various Governments rake in billions per year from that.
Called the Future Fund, and valued at around $US 357 billion today. 9th biggest in the world.
Paltry amount per capita compared to Norway with a population about 1/5 the size of ours. Their taxing of the oil and gas industry is very much higher as well, as a percentage of the value of the resources.
Our Governments have been very kind in our treatment of any mining industry, though oil and gas are perhaps the standouts in how much has been treated royalty free when exporting our resources.
In coal and mineral extraction there have been lots of examples of where the land has been left unremediated and Australian taxpayers have been left to foot the bill (if it is ever fixed). Then of course there has been the very kind tax treatment of the businesses and the questionable transfers of “loans” back to the parent companies.
Yes they did at the State level with various degrees of success. When Gillard tried to get some value at the federal level she was rolled by the Minerals Council. Also Howard decided to give everybody tax relief at the height of the boom instead of socking away more.
According to their web site it is worth $223B AU now. It was established with $60B which is a tiny proportion of the turnover of the coal boom.
However this thread is about the management of gas, specifically CSG and at both the State and federal level the royalties and other contributions have been turned to confetti with concessions and wavers. The people could have got far more out of that one-time resource. AFAIK zero dollars from gas went into the FF.
Edit:
{The origins of the money credited to the FF is obscure. The Dept of Finance tells us that of the 60,537 million deposited a substantial amount (significantly over 13,000 million) was from the sale of Telstra. How much exactly I cannot determine. The last deposit was 2008. The relationship to the gas boom is slight to zero.}
From The Australia Institute:
Australia has ten facilities that export gas as liquified natural gas (LNG). Six of these projects—four of the five operating in Western Australia, along with both of the Northern Territory’s facilities—pay no royalties, either state or federal. These facilities represent 56% of Australia’s gas export capacity. This means that more than half the gas exported from Australia is given for free to the companies exporting it.
Speaking on ABC’s Q&A on Monday night, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz claimed Australia was “giving away its natural resources”, something he found “mind-boggling”.
He said that if Australia made the fossil fuel industry pay for the value of the resources it extracts and its fair share of taxes, “you wouldn’t have the problems that you have today”.
