This is the most maddening observation of energy trade worldwide.
The East Coast Gas Cartel still has local prices sitting 10-20% above export netback prices to Europe and Asia:
This is playing a key role in keeping electricity prices around 80% higher than they should be on a quarterly moving average basis:
Meanwhile, China doesn’t need the gas:
Asian re-exports reached 2.7 million mt/year, marking a 46% year-on-year increase… Having declined in 2022 due to an unexpected increase in LNG demand, European re-exports rebounded by 27% in 2023 to 2.5 million mt/year,” Ayush Agarwal, LNG analyst at S&P Global, said in a 2024 LNG trade report. “Mainland China emerged as the leading re-exporter in the Asia-Pacific region (1.0 million mt)…
Japan is doing it, too, to a lesser degree. These two nations are the biggest whingers whenever Australia threatens to reserve more gas for itself.
China alone is re-exporting 50Pj, the equivalent of one-third of the annual gas consumption in the local National Electricity Market (NEM), and soon it will equal double as renewable sources rise:
Reserving this tiny fraction of Asian market gas for Australian use will crash inflation, end all energy transformation problems, and finish the energy wars overnight.
It is the Australian government’s economic, national interest, and moral duty.
Yeh, nah.
