Energy superidiot on course for Gasmageddon

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This is why. The Guardian.

The West Australian Labor premier, Roger Cook, has encouraged his federal counterparts to consider a gas reserve on the east coast as it mulls a regulatory overhaul to shore up supply and contain prices.

Cook said WA’s gas reservation policy, which requires offshore producers set aside 15% of supplies for local users, has resulted in cheaper gas for households and business since it was introduced in 2006.

After criticising Peter Dutton’s gas reserve plan during the election campaign, the Albanese government is preparing to consider its own version as part of a six-month review of domestic gas market regulations.

The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, has signalled any mechanism would only apply to new projects, a key difference from Dutton’s proposal.

This is corrupt journalism. Albo’s proposal is not domestic reservation. It is sound and fury signifying nothing.

If reservation is not a full market blanket, then the export cartel will simply shift other gas offshore.

Albo is proposing fake reservation so that real domestic reservation, which Dutton’s plan did brilliantly, become impossible to do.

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Albanese’s fake domestic reservation will solve nothing and will require:

  • $15-20Gj to make NT gas viable in the east, or
  • $15-25Gj gas imports, or
  • more QLD gas, which is cheap but won’t be provided cheaply without domestic reservation.

Whichever way it goes, you lose.

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But The Guardian will never admit that because…ugly, white, male bald head.

It’s beyond intellectually dishonest.

It is dense.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.