Despite ignoring the issue forever, the MSM is cock-a-whoop:
Here is what Shell has done:
Shell’s Queensland-based gas company QGC on Monday notified customers it was again accepting bids for 8 petajoules of wholesale gas supply for 2023. The new supplies were in addition to the 20 petajoules it had offered domestically since December, it said.
The problem is, before the freeze, it was offering 50Pj:
On Monday, Shell made the difficult decision to pause an Expression of Interest (EOI) process, which had been in-market for more than a month, to supply an additional 50 petajoules of gas to domestic customers in 2023 and 2024. Shell was undertaking this process in compliance with the voluntary Heads of Agreement we entered into with the Australian Government in September.
Does 8Pj of gas sound like capitulation to you? Sounds like a drip feed to me. It may signal more to come, or it may not. Woodside sales remain shut.
This is opening up the chance for others to game energy prices:
The manufacturer’s contract with AGL Energy expired on December 31 and the retailer – like others – fell onto AGL’s $39.67 a GJ default market offer, the rate customers accept when long-term contracts ends.
Retailers are exempt from the government’s gas market intervention, so there is no requirement for retailers to adhere to the $12/GJ cap, and these firms insist they don’t have supply to offer customers discounted contracts.
AGL is now buying gas for $12Gj and charging customers $40Gj.
Where is the enforcement action by Chicken Chalmers and the ACCC across the board? Current prices are still going to add 2% to the CPI and transfer huge swathes of income and wealth from everybody to the cartels.
This is a scab grab, not a market.
Smash ’em all!
