Gas cartel trades footy cards as Australia destroyed

This is absolute madness:

The prospects for a Middle Eastern takeover bid emerging for Santos are regarded by the market as unlikely, even as the oil and gas producer engages in talks with third parties on potential asset sales to unlock value.

However, analysts including MST Marquee’s Saul Kavonic are not ruling out the possibility of international takeover interest in the Adelaide-based producer, which has been pressured to consider corporate activity to help revive its languishing share price.

A report by Bloomberg News that Saudi Aramco and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (Adnoc) have separately been examining potential bids for Santos has drawn fresh attention to the potential for takeover interest in Santos, which earlier this year was the target of a mooted $80 billion merger with Woodside Energy.

…“It’s a real stretch to think Aramco or Adnoc would actually bid for Santos,” Mr Kavonic said.

“The most interesting aspect of this is if it might signal there are more advanced discussions under way with another bidder, and this has been leaked to add impetus to those discussions.”

I have absolutely no idea what this is about.

What I can say is that allowing Santos, a founding member of the East Coast gas cartel, to be taken over by anyone, let alone a Middle East LNG competitor, is so damaging to the national interest that I don’t know where to look.

Earlier this year, we had a takeover offer for Origin Energy, another founding member of the cartel, which was spiked in the end by super funds because the life extension of Eraring coal power station added more value to the firm than the bidders were willing to pay.

That is, the cartelier put NSW taxpayers over a barrel for Eraring subsidies and that torpedoed the bid.

The same kind of regulatory arbitrage will happen with any foreign takeover of Santos, making it even harder to secure Australian gas for Australians.

This is not business. It is the rape of the national energy grid by energy monopolists given carte blanche by a government afraid to defend the country.

I repeat, unless Australia secures greater access to its own gas resources in QLD, its energy transition will fail, power bill shocks will become permanent, the economy will be utterly de-industrialised, and housing construction will be permanently retarded by building material costs as well as structurally higher interest rates.

Eventually, even house prices will fall as the underlying economy is trashed, budgets are forced to rationalise, and there is insufficient income to support the interest rate structure.

We will become Inflation Island of the southern hemisphere, whose denizens’ living standards collapse at spectacular speed.