Gas cartel tries to cut you out of discounts

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The gas cartel is evil.

East coast gas producers are ramping up informal talks this week with manufacturers as they hunt for alternative ways of meeting buyers’ concerns about unaffordable gas and try to head off the forced oversupply of the market envisaged under Labor’s gas reservation scheme.

The talks, which include some overseas investors in Australia’s LNG export industry, may consider proposals such as a levy on the gas industry that could be used to subsidise buyers of energy, according to gas industry sources.

Another option is for a levy on producers that could be used to fund pipeline or storage infrastructure that would be called on to help meet demand in the southern states on heavy-usage winter days, they say.

The outside-the-box alternatives are being considered amid extreme concern among gas producers about the impact of the Albanese government’s plan to force a glut in the east coast domestic market by requiring LNG exporters to supply the equivalent of 20 per cent of their exports to local customers.

Gas producers insist such a scheme would cause prices to dive and ruin the domestic market, while LNG investors in Asia worry it will reduce volumes available for export and endanger their long-term energy security.

This is ALL lies. There will be no glut. There will be enough surplus to sever the local price and the international price. If a producer has high-cost gas, it will go overseas. If it is cheap, it will stay here.

If reserves become uneconomic, then nobody, anywhere, wants them. So $#%^ off.

50Pj is 10% of the market, hardly excessive, and it will be absorbed as the gas usage industry rebounds.

Year Exports (PJ) Contracts (PJ) Spot (PJ) Reservation Volume (PJ) Remaining 2P (PJ) Bass Strait Supply (PJ)
2015 420 700 -280 -56 38,000 680
2016 940 950 -10 -2 37,060 650
2017 1,140 1,030 110 22 35,920 620
2018 1,190 1,080 110 22 34,730 590
2019 1,200 1,110 90 18 33,530 560
2020 1,120 1,120 0 0 32,410 530
2021 1,270 1,140 130 26 31,140 500
2022 1,177 1,150 27 5 29,963 470
2023 1,194 1,160 34 7 28,769 450
2024 1,250 1,170 80 16 27,519 430
2025 1,233 1,170 63 13 26,286 410
2026 1,230 1,170 60 12 25,056 390
2027* 1,225 1,170 55 +11 23,831 370
2028* 1,220 1,165 55 +11 22,611 350
2029* 1,215 1,160 55 +11 21,396 330
2030* 1,210 1,150 260 +52 20,186 310
2031* 1,120 1,150 260 +52 19,066 290
2032* 1,100 1,100 260 +52 17,966 270
2033* 1,100 1,100 260 +52 16,866 250
2034* 1,100 1,100 260 +52 15,766 230
2035* 1,100 1,100 260 +52 14,666 210

The alternatives are all scams. Talking to manufacturers about cheap gas cuts you out as a beneficiary. What about gas for power, which is how households will benefit most?

We don’t need a levy for a pier pipeline south. APA is already building a nice fat pipe to suck the gas south.

Just apply the 20% gas reservation to spot and new contracts. The cartel is desperate to kill because it works!

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.
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