Sometimes it’s good when the international press comes calling on an Australian issue.
Sometimes it’s bad. Like Bloomberg today.
Once considered too remote and expensive, Beetaloo has gained significance as Australia faces looming east-coast gas shortages.
Developers estimate the resource could be worth more than US$6 trillion at current Asian LNG prices. Tamboran ultimately targets production of around 20 billion cubic metres (bcm) a year, equivalent to roughly half of Australia’s current gas consumption.
…Connecting it to the east coast would require substantial new pipeline investment, while exporting gas through Darwin would require infrastructure expansion.
Tamboran is also discussing the possibility of supplying gas to an expansion of Inpex Corp.’s Ichthys LNG terminal or Santos Ltd.’s Darwin LNG plant.
Consider how disconnected this article is from reality.
Beetaloo gas is FAR more expensive than existing reserves in SA and QLD stolen by gas cartelier Santos and its GLNG partners after they lied and said they had enough of their own gas to fill their two LNG trains.
Instead, they stole and sent to China 996Pj of gas in the last decade from QLD wells that should have gone into the domestic market for $3-4Gj. This could be sold in Melbourne for $6-7Gj in Melbourne.
STO and GLNG also stole another 500Pj from the Cooper Basin and sent that to China. This could have been sold profitably in Melbourne for $5Gj, and it still has substantial reserves if depleted by STO’s rape of the economy.
Shipping Beetaloo gas to the East Coast is a disastrous idea, arriving in Melbourne and Sydney around $15G, $3G more than today’s average price.
The obvious answer for a despot would be to push STO to shift its QLNG contract obligations to Beetaloo supply while selling the cheap gas to the Australian market, instead of the other way around.
These cartel economics are enough to make your toenails curl. They are the ONLY cause of disruption to the local energy transition, as well as a major contributor to endemic inflation.
The mooted gas reservation does begin to fix these issues, but the loss of cheap gas resources will haunt the country for generations to come.
Dangling the continent’s most expensive gas from Beetaloo in front of brutalised Aussies as a solution is simply blaming the victim.
