Via Herald Sun:
VICTORIANS have suffered the biggest hike in gas prices of anyone in Australia.
Just two years ago, Victoria had the cheapest wholesale gas price. Now, it has the costliest.
Victorians, the nation’s biggest residential users of gas, endured a doubling of the wholesale price paid in 2015 before the cost dipped slightly towards the end of last year, a new report has revealed.
The report comes just weeks after the consumer watchdog found that Victorian businesses were paying the nation’s highest gas costs and warned that the Andrews Government’s contentious decision to lock up gas resources was driving up prices.
The findings, commissioned by the federal government, has again called for more gas exploration to increase domestic supply, reduce costs, and potentially curb major gas price rises in future.
Written by consultants Oakley Greenwood, it found that wholesale gas prices dropped in all states following federal intervention in the domestic market supply during the second half of last year.
The federal government will seize on the report to increase pressure on Victoria to abandon its temporary ban on onshore gas exploration.
Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg told the Herald Sun: “We now have proof.
“Victorian families and businesses are now paying the highest prices in the country because of (Premier) Daniel Andrews’s mindless bans on conventional and unconventional gas, which is locking up 40 years’ worth of domestic gas supply.
“(It’s) a situation that will only get worse if Labor continues their job-destroying policies.”
Wow. Straight lies covered by paid for “independent” lies. The reason Victorian gas prices are now higher than elsewhere are:
- QLD absorbed way too much domestic gas output so it could export it as LNG at huge losses;
- this included VIC’s Gippsland JV output which produced 330PJ last year versus total VIC consumption around 180Pj;
- in other words, if VIC were analysed in the selective terms proposed by Fryndenliar then it is the major and only gas surplus state on the east coast, producing way more gas than it needs.
Has Victoria built a wall between itself and other states? Plugged its pipelines? This whole thing is a bullshit political construct, trying to blame the Andrews Government for Federal ineptitude.
Don’t get me wrong. We need more gas. And I reckon VIC should lift its moratorium where appropriate to make some minor contribution to fixing the shortage. The same argument applies much more so to NSW which has bugger all output and big consumption.
But the major culprit is the Federal Government which has failed to activate its own east coast domestic reservation gas mechanism and so although prices have come off they remain ridiculous:
Moreover, any increase in VIC gas will simply head North to Asia via pipelines to Curtis Island until the mechanism is used.
Frydenliar should either be sacked for poor economics or politicising a vital national interest issue and probably both.
