Wow, man, we are pwned.
Santos-backed Gladstone LNG has secured a reprieve from the Albanese government’s domestic gas reservation scheme, shielding the Queensland project from the full force of the new rules while honouring existing export contracts.
The concession is a victory of sorts for Santos and its international partners, which faced the prospect of having to divert gas to Australian customers instead of shipping it to the world under the original Labor proposal.
But the new regime will also constrain the flexibility that has historically allowed GLNG to resell gas when international LNG prices make additional exports attractive.
Oh yeah. How?
The Australian on Wednesday revealed the government backed down, with the exposure draft instead requiring ‘up to’ 20 per cent of exportable volumes. The scheme will also be delayed six months.
The distinction is significant. The legislation allows the Resources Minister to reduce an exporter’s obligation where existing contracts, domestic gas arrangements or infrastructure constraints prevent it from meeting the full requirement.
Has anybody heard of the gas lever, the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism?
How is this ministerial discretion, in the hands of the gas hippopotamus, any different from that? It’s exactly the same.
Even the gas cartel didn’t want this outcome. It was begging to be regulated, so Santos doesn’t entirely destroy its social licence to operate by stealing third-party gas from Australians and selling it to the Chinese.
I mean, seriously, what is the point of having a government at all if an evil gas cartel knows more about the polity than it does?
After nearly a year of furious debate and lobbying, we are right back where we started, with no gas reservation and no gas rentier tax, even as LNG war-profiteering erupts again.
This is complete madness, especially as we enter the data centre blowoff.
Albo idiots couldn’t be stupid enough to remove the existing East Coast price cap next, could they?
Oh yes, yes, they could.
Are they deliberately using gas as a de facto carbon price? Or are they just stupid and corrupt?
EnergyAustralia, the nation’s third-largest electricity and gas retailer, is pursuing plans to convert the Yallourn coal-fired generator site in the Latrobe Valley into a low-carbon energy hub that could support new “hyperscale” data centres once the power station is retired in two years’ time.
Chief executive Mark Collette said coal-fired power plant sites offered the exact features required by data centres, including water and around-the-clock electricity to run their high-intensity computing and cooling systems, a skilled workforce and supportive communities. He said these sites would offer data centre developers the fastest track to getting new facilities built and plugged into the grid
EnergyAustralia has been in early-stage talks with potential investors and data centre companies about the opportunity to repurpose Yallourn as an “energy security precinct”, containing solar power, back-up gas power and battery storage.
This is an outbreak of sense, but making gas more expensive won’t help, and I expect the AI build-out to implode in 3,2,1…
Hopefully it will take down Albo’s idiots with it.
