From The Australian:
Gladstone’s big gas export plants pumped out LNG at near record rates last month, drawing gas from as far as Victoria to take advantage of resurgent LNG spot prices, despite major maintenance works.
The situation, combined with rising oil prices, has helped send Origin and Santos shares to two and one-year highs, respectively.
Luckily for the gas exporters, which are under political scrutiny as peak summer gas demand approaches amid forecasts of shortages, domestic spot prices have remained subdued over the traditionally low spring demand period, as Bass Strait volumes remain relatively high.
The latest Gladstone Ports statistics show Queensland’s three big LNG export plants shipped 1.685 million tonnes of LNG last month, up from 1.681 million tonnes in September, representing an annualised rate of 20.2 million tonnes a year
Despite Shell’s QGC plant being down for scheduled maintenance for two weeks during the month, October exports were not far off the record of 1.75 million tonnes from December last year.
This illustrates the potential for the big plants, built at a cost of more than $70 billion and not all able to operate fully in December, to export much more gas than they have been doing so far.
The strong Queensland exports come as Asian LNG spot prices surge, rising 60 per cent since the start of August to near three-year highs of about $US9 per million British thermal units, or $11.22 per gigajoule.
Actually, that is about $9.45Gj. And these shipments are still loss-making by about $5Gj per tonne on an all-in cost basis so the “potential” is rubbish. Moreover, there’ll be no taxes paid. Indeed, governments are shelling out money to pensioners to pay the cartel.
Meanwhile, the spot price in Australia was yesterday AUD 7.80Gj, roughly at export net-back for SE Australia once piping costs are added, at AUD 10. Absurdly high and far too much for the local economy, as evidenced by collapsing retail sales.
Gas reservation now. We need to keep four million tonnes (200Pj) of that exported gas here per annum to fix the shortage. Set the price at AUD 5.
