Via the AFR:
Santos and its GLNG project partners have taken their most decisive step yet to head off damaging caps on gas exports, agreeing to divert 30 petajoules of gas away from export and into the domestic east coast market.
The move comes as the federal government is due this month to decide whether to declare 2018 a “shortfall” year for gas on the east coast, which would cause it to slap restrictions on LNG shipments, specifically on GLNG.
Santos said the gas, which represents almost 5 per cent of east coast annual demand, “is being sold” to east coast customers, including power companies, and would otherwise have been exported as LNG.
It didn’t comment on which customers in Asia will now receive lower volumes of LNG, given that all the volumes shipped from the $US18.5 billion GLNG project in Gladstone are covered under long-term contracts.
“We have been producing and marketing domestic gas for many years, and we have the capacity to leverage our various assets and partnerships to ensure this energy security,” chief executive Kevin Gallagher said in a statement.
Prices are the proof of the pudding. We need to see $17.50G fall to $7Gj. Just for starters.
Meanwhile, the Coalition has descended into idiocy:
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Federal Liberal MP Craig Kelly has again warned of dangers posed by renewable energy to the lives of pensioners with claims blackouts in the upcoming summer could shut down nursing home airconditioners.
Mr Kelly faced calls from Labor to quit as the House of Representatives’ energy committee chair back in April when he told the ABC’s AM program that pensioners could be killed as a result of renewable energy policies pushing prices up, putting off older Australians from turning the heating up.
The backbencher has again called on the Turnbull government to suspend the Renewable Energy Target and increase the supply of dispatchable coal power across the nation.
“Imagine aged care centres in Western Sydney, the health risks and increased risk of deaths if the air conditioners can’t be turned on,” he said.
Any airconditioning cut outs during periods of extreme heat could be potentially deadly with the December 2014 heatwave in Victoria resulting in more than 200 deaths, and a 2010 heatwave killing nearly 10,000 people in Moscow.
Mr Kelly told The Australian the renewable energy target could be just as deadly in the summer months.
Given it is the gas price that is driving power costs, iposo facto, death by gas…
