Australia: QGC Calls for Rational Debate on Domestic Gas

BG Australia Chairman Catherine Tanna urged a rational approach by gas users to the domestic gas debate, rejecting claims that gas is unavailable in the eastern Australian market.

Tanna told the Australian National Conference on Resources and Energy in Canberra that homes, shops, restaurants and similar commercial users had – and would continue to have – secure and contracted supply.

“Gas is available and some gas users are getting on with securing that gas,” she said.

Tanna said that when large industrial users said gas was unavailable, they were often really saying they could not contract gas at a price they wanted to pay.

“Often, these users want to pay an historically based price which, of course, has been relatively low,” she said.

“However, prices today reflect different cost structures from those of a decade ago.

“These costs are driven by factors that include greater complexity in gas production, increased environmental obligations and conditions on producers and, particularly, rising construction and labour costs in the resources sector.”

On domestic gas reservation, Tanna said research showed that countries which suppressed the wholesale price of gas and directed it as subsidised energy or feedstock to industry experienced shortages because of a lack of incentive to explore for gas.

Tanna said the public debate needed to be shaped by a clear understanding of the forces transforming the market.

“We should not manage for imagined problems and we should not manage for the gain of a few,” she said.

“Instead, the focus should be on challenges facing industrial gas users.”

[mappress]
LNG World News Staff, October 03, 2013