There’s a great piece at Bloomberg today on how Japan is destroying Australia using our own gas against us:
Every six hours, somewhere in the world, a shipment of liquefied natural gas controlled by a Japanese company leaves a port. The vessels — giant, floating thermoses that keep the fuel super-chilled — cross the globe, destined for pipelines in energy-hungry countries in every hemisphere.
These tankers, which handle a quarter of all LNG shipments, are only the tip of Japan’s increasingly dominant gas empire. With the enthusiastic backing of the government, corporate Japan now offers a complete package for countries looking to replace aging, and near-unfinanceable, coal power stations with gas: Its engineering firms will provide technology and parts, its utilities some fuel, and the banks will offer financing.
…Currently, Japan uses about two-thirds of the LNG it buys and resells the remaining third abroad. METI’s Naka said Japan is aiming to cut imports by about 15% by 2030 from last year’s level, though that also depends on new demand for data centers and other uncertainties.
Note the small number of lines emanating from QLD. This is the east coast gas cartel contribution to the Japanese empire.
Obviously, it is gas that Japan can do without. Yet it is gas that Australia cannot do without, as all states in the National Electricity Network (everybody east of WA) are starved of gas, leading to permanently paralysing prices, a derailed energy transition, hollowed-out industry, and inflation shock.
Australia needs to secure about 200pj of gas that is currently exported for use in the NEM to fix all of its energy issues.
QLD exports roughly 24mt of LNG per year and Eastern states need to hold back 4mt of that to cure all energy issues forever.
Japan and China won’t even notice the difference.
