Australia is caught in its worst living standards crisis in a century but the government has gone to Hawaii. Albo is busy selling out Australia to China. Mad King is busy selling out Australia to Japan and Korea. Bovver Bowen is busy selling out Australia to Egpyt. And Chicken Chalmers is busy selling out Australia to the US.
And while Albo’s jet-setting cabinet manages everybody but Australia, the Evil Gas Cartel is filling the airwaves with its propaganda:
Political attacks on the energy sector risk killing investment, driving prices higher and undermining national security and the economies of Asian neighbours, a gas and oil industry leader has warned.
With the Albanese government poised to intervene in the gas market over skyrocketing prices, Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association chairman Ian Davies warned that market intervention risked destroying energy security as a foundation of Australia’s national security for the past 50 years.
“Our resources have underpinned the economies and rising living standards of our neighbours, friends and allies in Asia for over half a century,” Mr Davies said on Thursday in a strong defence of an industry he described as unfairly “demonised”.
“In turn we have benefited from their investment in the capital-intensive development of our resources and access to the enormous scale of their markets – generating jobs, business opportunities, regional development, export income and government revenue for Australians.
“Very importantly, the economic and social security that has come with access to reliable, affordable energy for our Asian neighbours is the foundation of our own national security and a long period of stability in our region. However, this is not a future we can take for granted.”
…Mr Davies, in his final speech to the APPEA board in Perth, acknowledged the “stubbornly high” energy prices but said market intervention risked destroying the sector.
“As a result, governments continue to experiment with ways to bring prices down, ignoring the only sustainable, long-term solution to east-coast energy issues – which is more investment in more supply,” he said.
“There is no example anywhere in the world where market interventions such as price caps have worked.
Expect everywhere that there is domestic reservation, including WA, which is in every gas exporter globally except the east coast of Australia. One wonders how these people can keep a straight face as they speak.
It is the Evil Gas Cartel that has destroyed Australia’s energy security and therefore that of all of our export customers as well.
Confronting the cartel is in everybody’s best interests. That is why freewheeling US private equity is currently throwing a cool $18bn at Origin, a founding member of the cartel, undeterred by local price caps, reservation, tax discussions and furious industry drivel about “sovereign risk”:
“The biggest threat to decarbonisation and energy transition is lack of public support. It’s not governments, it’s not companies, it’s not policy, it’s not markets – it’s public support,” Thomas says.
“The way to lose the public is to not provide affordable, reliable energy. And so people need to recognise that this transition is a transition, and that gas is the key fuel to make it happen.
“It’s in everybody’s interest that we provide security and price stability. Otherwise, there’s a real risk that the public turns on decarbonisation and then we’re all losers. And so even the most fervent environmentalists should recognise that price stability is in their interest.”
BP ain’t worried, either:
“We’re all in on Australia,” says Bernard Looney.
What is striking in a half hour sit-down with BP’s global chief executive is not just $2.06bn invested in Australia over the past five years but the scale of very different new projects under way.
This is the business that nine months ago took a $37bn writedown with its decision to pull out of Russia. In the past 12 months, shares in BP have doubled in value and are back to pre-Covid levels.
Local oil and gas parasites have the intellectual depth of mosquitoes and are about as useful.
Meanwhile, energy prices globally are still falling as warm weather comes to Europe’s rescue:
Except in Australia where the Evil Gas Cartel has taken the absence of the government as an opportunity to lift prices:
Helping reboom power prices:
And futures:
It appears we are damned if we have the Albanese government and damned if we don’t.
