Australia: Risky price for energy exportation

GREG HOY, REPORTER: Flick of a switch: power. But now producing 255 billion kilowatt hours of electricity each year to power Australia. The nation’s power stations are under increasing pressure – most are ageing, many heavily in debt and 84 per cent coal-fired. The dilemma for government is: while nuclear remains a dirty word and carbon sequestration a distant dream, what can secure Australia’s base load energy needs between now and 2030?

ROMAN DEMANSKI, ENERGY USERS ASSOCIATION: There’s likely to be a much greater reliance on gas, including for electricity generation as a sort of a lower emission fuel.

BELINDA ROBINSON, PETROLEUM PRODUCTION & EXPLORATION ASSN: We have in Australia many hundreds of years worth of natural gas, and we sit on the doorsteps of some of the country’s with the highest levels of economic growth being projected. To somehow suggest that we should be denying those trading partners access to something that we have hundreds of years worth so that we can perhaps distort a domestic market by flooding it to ensure long-term cheap prices for a handful of very large, successful international companies, can’t – shouldn’t go unchallenged.

GREG HOY: Last year, multinational companies exported 20 million tons, or $10 billion dollars, worth of the nation’s natural gas reserves. The natural gas chilled and compressed into liquid or LNG, at its destination, one ship’s cargo, once defrosted, expands to six shiploads of natural gas for energy-starved Asian nations locked into long-term supply contracts. Production and transport might not be carbon efficient, but then, everyone’s a winner.

ABC