With lower wholesale prices and the early winter gas price spike dropping out of quarterly numbers, Albo’s horror energy shock has finally passed its peak:
The number one cause of the shock is tearaway gas prices that refuse to fall below Albos calamitous gas price floor:
Today we are treated to some obtuse analysis from gas cartel apologist Saul Kavonic of MST Marquee:
“It has been the Federal Government’s multi-pronged assault on the gas sector over the last 24 months that has resulted in less investment in gas capacity on the east coast and Victoria in particular,” Kavonic claimed.
“What you have seen Federal Labor do is the emergency gas price cap that they imposed, which did a huge amount of irreparable damage to gas investment on the east coast, you have safeguard reforms which disproportionately targeted gas.
“We had the Government funding the Environmental Defenders Office bringing green lawfare against new gas developments, proposed changes to the EPBC Act that makes it more difficult to do gas projects and a toughening up of the ADGSM, which could potentially restrict exports out of eastern Australia.
“Take it all in totality and the industry is getting the very clear message from the Australian Government that the gas industry is not really that welcome in Australia anymore and investment is therefore reducing, capacity is reducing and that’s why we had two near misses in two years in terms of having major energy security or blackout events.
“And it is a probability rather than a possibility that we have shortages in the next few years.”
This might make were there an east coast gas market. But there isn’t. There is an export cartel controlling all reserves.
In that environment, less intervention would have made no difference.
Why? Because the gas cartel controls prices by raising and lowering export volumes as well as via the development of reserves.
Greater volumes would simply have meant greater exports and the same prices.
This pattern of behaviour was in place long before the war profiteering of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting public policy interventions.
If there is an issue with the interventions, it is that they did not go far enough. There has been no policy to fix the failed market:
- no activation of the ADGSM, despite another massive price shock;
- no enforcement of the price cap;
- no imposition of “lose it or lose it” laws to ensure resource development;
- no ongoing political pressure, including possible expropriation and/or export levies or reasonable taxes.
Basically, Albo’s idiots popped in for a few weeks, enjoyed prices that were falling owing to global pressures, and then left it all in the hands of the industry-captured and treasonous Resources Minister, Mad King.
In short, all Albo did was poke the bear, not make it afraid.
And you wonder why there has been no price relief!
