Via The Australian comes a lonely Andrew Liveras:
“It is a tragedy that manufacturing in Australia is being hit by high electricity prices when we have abundant energy. It is a situation which should be remedied as fast as possible.”
Mr Liveris cited the potential of the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin, some 500km southeast of Darwin, which was “the third-largest shale gas deposit on the planet”.
“There is a lot more gas onshore in Australia which could be produced. There is a lot of gas sitting under the ground in Australia onshore (which could be tapped by) working with state governments,” according to Mr Liveris, who is currently advising the Northern Territory government on developing its gas industry.
He criticised the current system, where two major companies supply gas to the east coast of Australia using their own pipelines.
“If we can build a competitive local gas infrastructure, break the oligopolies and get prices to the power stations down, we could put in gas turbines to replace the coal-fired turbines and retire the coal fleet and you would get the best of both worlds,” he said.
…The ex-Dow boss is no longer advocating the federal government introduce a domestic gas reservation policy that would seek to restrict or ban gas exports because there had been a big increase in gas production around the world which was holding down world prices.
Why would he advocate it when the Government shows no will to enforce the existing ADGSM which is still trading far out of the money.
Gas imports will raise local prices further and local gas is too expensive to matter at $8Gj and up.
It’s over for the east coast. There will be no lower gas nor power prices until the electricity decentralisation boom becomes a reality through the 2020s via solar plus battery. Even then it will only be for the rich as the oligopolies gouge the poor for access to the grid.
Manufacturing should leave for WA or the US.
You’re in Nauru, Andrew, not Australia.
