3 October 2017, The Guardian, Voters back fracking bans despite pressure on states to drop them. Despite the Turnbull government’s insistence that state-based restrictions on unconventional gas extraction are putting Australia’s energy security at risk, twice as many voters support the bans as oppose them. A new poll, conducted by the progressive thinktank the Australia Institute, has found 49% of Australians support a moratorium on fracking for gas in their own state, while just 24% oppose it. It also found 74% of Australians support an increased renewable energy target in their own state, demonstrating support for state-based renewable energy targets is largely unchanged since March 2016. The Australia Institute survey of 1,421 Australians took place between 17 and 26 September. It asked voters if they supported or opposed their state governments implementing a moratorium on fracking for gas and an increased renewable energy target. The poll ended last week just as the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, wrote to the New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, and the Northern Territory chief minister, Michael Gunner, asking them to lift their “blanket moratoriums” on new gas production and warning they were putting Australia’s energy security and industries at risk. Read More here
Tag Archives: gas
2 October 2017, Australian Institute, We have enough cheap, easy-to-extract gas to last 100 years. There’s just one problem. Australia has plenty of cheap gas. The problem is private companies are selling it all overseas, writes principal adviser at the Australia Institute Mark Ogge. Hard to believe, isn’t it? But it’s true: in the last decade, tens of thousands of square kilometers of Queensland farmland has been covered in gas fields. The export gas rush in Australia is one of the largest and fastest expansions of a gas industry ever seen, anywhere in the world. We are awash with gas. The problem is we are allowing almost all of the cheap and easy-to-get-at gas to be sent overseas. The gas in some areas is close to the surface, in big reserves all together, where there are no bothersome farmers, aquifers or national parks in the way. That gas is relatively cheap to extract. But some gas is deeper and harder to get at for all sorts of geological reasons. And that gas is more expensive to extract. Some gas is not just deep and hard to get at, but is underneath valuable aquifers that would need to be drilled through to get the gas. Much of it is on properties of people who don’t want a gas field on their land, or on properties a long way from where the gas is needed. That gas is very expensive to extract. So, naturally, the gas companies’ first preference is for the easily extractable, cheap gas, and they drill that and sell it first. The problem is, there is a limited amount of that cheaper to extract gas. Once that gas is gone, only the difficult, expensive-to-extract gas remains. That was OK when it was just being sold to Australian customers. There was enough reasonably easily extractable, cheap gas to last for decades at least. Read More here
15 September 2017, Renew Economy, Blackouts and baseload: Debunking myths of AEMO reports and Liddell. The day after the release of the two key reports from the Australian Energy Market Operator last week – its annual Electricity Statement of Opportunities and the specially commissioned report on dispatchable generation requested by the federal government – RenewEconomy could barely believe what it read and heard in the media. Consumers were being frightened into thinking that the lights were going out, the economy would collapse, and they’d all be better off going out to buy a generator and a supply of candles and batteries. The only possible solution to the crisis, we were told, was to stop renewable energy and keep the Liddell coal generator on line. What was missed – in the fog of politics, ideologies and deliberate misinformation – were the fundamental messages of the two reports: that the energy system is transitioning quickly, and it is more or less unstoppable, because of the march of technologies and global trends. This is not a bad thing, AEMO boss Audrey Zibelman underlined. But it does require some policy certainty and some co-ordination to ensure that Australia’s dirty, expensive and increasingly unreliable grid can be transformed into a smarter, cleaner, more reliable and cheaper source of power. Read More here
14 July 2017, The Conversation, Memo to COAG: Australia is already awash with gas. Federal, state and territory energy ministers are gathering today in Brisbane for the tenth meeting of the COAG Energy Council. In the wake of the Finkel Review, and against a backdrop of rising electricity and gas prices, they have much to discuss. Some of the focus will certainly be on gas policy and prices. Earlier this week, the federal energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, argued that state governments should develop their onshore gas reserves to relieve pressure on the gas market. Victoria and the Northern Territory both have bans on onshore gas development, introduced partly to protect prime farming land. Controversially, federal Liberal MP Craig Kelly suggested on Thursdaythat pressure from renewable resources on energy prices meant that “people will die” this winter if they’re afraid to turn on their heating. Yet it is gas generation, not renewables, that typically sets the price in the electricity market. As Fairfax reported yesterday, electricity prices move up and down with the gas price, almost exactly in tandem. What’s more, the reality is that Australia has enough existing gas reserves to keep producing at current rates, including exports to the international LNG market, for at least the next 25 years. Developing extra onshore gas potentially risks harming valuable agricultural land for little gain – and certainly won’t bring energy prices down by the end of this winter. Read More here