Damn right from Alan Kohler today:
The word “urgent” appears six times in the independent review of the future security of the national electricity market led by the chief scientist, Alan Finkel, and the words emissions intensity or emissions trading schemes don’t appear next to any of them.
The review reserves its most pressing language for the need for more gas supplies, and for “strategic policy leadership”.
Perhaps the solution is for everyone to have a break from arguing over broad policy, and therefore climate change, and instead to focus on the other thing Finkel says is urgent to keep down electricity prices: gas supplies.
The review doesn’t have a solution — it just says the need for “greater gas supplies for electricity generation is urgent”.
Chapter 6, which deals with prices, says prices are going to rise over the next three years, first because of the retirement of two coal-fired generators — Northern in SA and Hazelwood in Victoria — and second because of rising wholesale gas prices.
…This is due to supplies being diverted to meet international LNG supply contracts, low levels of exploration and production, restrictions on onshore exploration and development is some states and territories, and infrastructure constraints.
….all the easy, uncontroversial, gas seems to have been sold to offshore buyers, so that what’s left for the Australian energy system requires fracking, which a lot of people are dead against — both on the Left and Right.
The economists in the ACCC, government and Finkel Report keep relying on a solution that the public is dead against in more fracking. That battle is over. Get over it.
It’s time to be pragmatic instead. Impose domestic reservation on the QLD three. Force the suppliers to sell at mandated prices if you have to. If they won’t sell it locally at a mandated margin then they forfeit the gas. If offshore customers have to pay more then good. If they won’t and the cartel is forced to take a margin hit then too bad. If the external contract breaks then too bad. If one goes out of business then too bad.
The east coast gas market is in a state of total market failure. In those circumstances, massive government intervention is entirely justified.
Indeed it is necessary.
Not so, says Kohler stablemate and rentier for hire, Gotti:
The chief executive of Dow Chemical, Andrew Liveris, came to Australia just over two years ago to announce a radical plan “to make Australia great again”.
Australian governments turned their back on the plan but US President-elect Donald Trump has selected Darwin-born Andrew Liveris for a key role to implement large parts of the Liveris plan for Australia “to make America great again”.
But at the 2014 ADC Leadership Retreat Liveris gave us a remarkable blueprint to begin the process of generating a much higher level of wealth and employment for the nation and slashing our youth unemployment. And so I again set out the 2014 Liveris plan for Australia and invite you to watch the video interview I did with Liveris on Hayman Island.
The first part of the Liveris plan did not seem important in 2014 but later events showed how right he was. Liveris said we must start by giving farmers rights to substantial revenue from gas found under their land. That way the economics of farms would be transformed and they would become supporters of exploration and development, not opponents (which is what happened).
…Once we had the gas, stage two of the Liveris plan would swing into action because the gas development would require massive employment, creating pipeline investments to bring it to market. A free market for gas should be established, which will promote that development. Pipelines are ideal infrastructure investments for our self-managed funds, which would then involve the wider Australian community in the projects and help boost retiree income.
Here’s what Liveras has actually campaigned for repeatedly for years, via The Australian earlier this year:
One of Australia’s most prominent executive exports, Dow Chemicals chief executive Andrew Liveris, says the nation’s economy could be “transformed” if governments took greater action to encourage the supply of low-priced energy to advanced manufacturers.
Mr Liveris, the Darwin-born son of Greek migrants who has headed up Dow for 10 years, used his appearance at a business breakfast in Perth yesterday to renew his call for gas reservation policies that would ensure a supply of cheaper energy for Australian manufacturers.
Domestic reservation. The same as they have in the US, and pretty much in effect in every energy producer on earth.
Forgetful old coot is Gotti.
