Australian LNG

The gas cartel is undeterred by Do-nothing Malcolm: A softening in east coast gas prices in recent weeks has yet to bring down prices offered to manufacturers to levels they say are affordable, adding pressure to the federal government to slap restrictions on Queensland LNG exports for 2018.

Via The Australian: Malcolm Turnbull has seized on energy spokesman Mark Butler’s admission that Labor was warned that customers would be hit with higher energy prices from the gas exports it authorised in government five years ago, blaming the Gillard government for the spike in gas prices which has seen energy bills rise dramatically.

From Adam Creighton today: Taxpayers will have paid more than $60 billion through federal renewable energy subsidies by 2030, about twice what the crumbling car industry received over 15 years and enough to build about 10 large nuclear reactors.

Via Citi comes the horribly slow process of oil rebalancing: We’re at least a year from reasonable inventories if not more.

Via Domainfax: The hype was interstellar, but the content …more terrestrial.

Via a roundly climate change skeptical Richo: Malcolm Turnbull is running out of options as to what issue he might choose to fight the next election.

Break!

Jonathon Tepper has a new name for the CBA: And investors are voting with their wallets, hitting new lows: The chart still suggests no support right down to $70 and with the politics getting worse who knows?

Do-nothing Malcolm is on the move to higher airs: The nation’s electricity industry chiefs will be hauled in by Malcolm Turnbull for the second time in three weeks following an audit that revealed more than a million households are still paying the highest price rates ­imposed by energy retailers.

Lot’s of good material today on Australia’s great energy debacle.

No Wall St rally for you!

Like a moth to the flame, Judith Sloan just can’t leave the energy crisis alone: If sticking with the damaging renewable energy target and committing to a wildly excessive emissions reduction target under our commitment to the Paris climate agreement are not ideological, I’m a monkey’s uncle.

From Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg: It is not realistic to expect the return to $3-$4/gigajoule that Australians enjoyed less than a decade ago.

Dalian has tried but largely failed to blow off again today: Big Iron is down: Big Gas too.

The commodity pain trade is roaring upwards today with iron ore off the hook up 6%: Big Iron is pretty circumspect about it: Big Gas is weak, notably so when one reads all of the positive guff coming from brokers: Big Gold is hot as it signals more USD weakness.

The gas cartel is in full swing this week.

From Australia’s worst company, STO: That’s nearly $3bn in write downs on GLNG now.

I’ve been warning of this for a few years, via Macquarie: Event  WPL, OSH and STO release their 2017 half-year results on Aug 16, 22 and 24, respectively, and we updated our outlook ahead of results.

See ya and wouldn’t wanna be ya.

Via STO: Pelican Point is one of those gas-fired power stations that have sat idle as the gas cartel has applied discriminatory pricing across the east coast.

From The Australian over the weekend: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says South Australia’s energy plan is an “experiment” that should have been conducted privately. “You really have in South Australia, of course, been subjected to an experiment by (Premier) Jay Weatherill.