Junket queen delivers the gas

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AfricanQueen2

Is the AFR determined to ruin Jennifer Hewitt? Following her recent resources funded junkets to Perth and Biao Forum, she off to North Rankin LNG to sing more praises under the heading “Drop the resources prejudices”:

Am I allowed to say I am feeling rather macho? I have survived the helicopter ride to the North Rankin gas drilling platform 135 kilometres out to sea from Karratha on the north western coast of Australia.

…it’s all part of the new face of an Australian resources industry that is incredibly sophisticated, highly technical and extremely successful for the country despite the difficulties and costs involved.

Further evidence that old prejudices about the resources industry turning Australia into some sort of giant quarry (or well) with no “value add” were always wrong – and are now simply ludicrous.

No, Jen, they are not. Freezing gas into liquid is not “value add”. Value add is about elaborately transformed manufactures, like the platform you’re standing on, built in Korea, using Australian gas.

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A journalist feeling macho as she pontificates from a platform funded by the Australian Petroleum and Exploration Association is an equally questionable alchemy.

I note again that the AFR has not spelled out the lobby group behind the article, only offering the acronym at the end.

What was that about resources prejudice?

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.